xerif

xerif is an open-source automated typesetting system. It is based on XML and TeX and is designed for the production of high-quality print and digital publications.

xerif converts structured manuscripts into professionally typeset publications, combining the flexibility of XML workflows with the typographic quality of TeX. It is particularly suited for complex publications containing extensive footnotes, mathematical formulas, tables, indexes, multilingual content, and sophisticated layouts.

Overview

A typical transpect pipeline including xerif would look like this:

Manuscript
   |
   | Word / XML / TeX / Markdown
   v
transpect conversion
   |
   v
   +--> Hub XML
   +--> HTML
   +--> XML (client-specific)
   |
   v
transpect conversion (xml2tex)
   |
   v
   +--> TeX (CoCoTeX)
   |
   v
typesetting (LuaTeX)
   |
   +--> PDF/X/UA
   |
   v
Validation (XML with Schematron/RelaxNG, PDF/UA with VeraPDF)
   |
   +--> HTML report

xerif uses the transpect framework for XML processing and workflow orchestration. XProc pipelines coordinate the processing steps, XSLT performs the transformations, and Schematron/Relax NG are used for validation.

Features

Professional typesetting

xerif handles complex publishing requirements out of the box:

• Long footnotes and endnotes
• Multi-page tables
• Complex figure layouts
• Mathematical formulas
• Indexes and registers
• Bibliographies
• Cross references and hyperlinks
• Automatic tables of contents and lists
• Professional page breaking and pagination

Accessibility

xerif can create standards-compliant accessible PDFs:

• PDF/UA output
• PDF tagging
• Alternative texts
• Metadata for assistive technologies

Multilingual publishing

Thanks to Unicode, OpenType fonts, and advanced hyphenation support, xerif supports many writing systems, including Latin-based languages, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Multiple input and output formats

Supported input formats include:

• Microsoft Word
• XML (DocBook, JATS/BITS, TEI, customer-specific XML)
• TeX
• Markdown

Output formats include:

• PDF
• XML
• EPUB
• HTML

Technology

xerif is built around several open-source technologies:

• transpect – XML publishing framework and pipeline engine
• XProc – workflow orchestration
• XSLT – XML transformation
• Schematron / Relax NG – validation
• xml2tex – XML to TeX conversion
• CocoTeX – LuaTeX framework for professional books and journals
• LuaTeX – typesetting engine

The XML content is transformed into Hub XML and then converted into CocoTeX syntax. Formatting is controlled through TeX style files rather than being embedded directly into the generated TeX code, allowing reusable layouts for publishers, imprints, series, and individual publications.

Configuration

xerif uses the transpect configuration cascade mechanism. This allows publishers to define:

• Custom document templates
• Individual layouts
• Series-specific styles
• Publisher-specific rules
• Output configurations

without modifying the core processing pipelines. Usually you would want to store a client-specific configuration here:

a9s/common/ (this xerif repository)
  ├── (...)
a9s/my-client/
  ├── evolve-hub/ configuration for Hub preprocessing
  ├── xml2tex/ xml2tex configuration file
  ├── latex-oops CoCoTeX framework, typically included as submodule

Please see the xml2tex README on how to configure the xml2tex configuration.