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A program with an existing MIL-PRF-28001 FOSI can publish from it directly. Ironmark renders the FOSI with an in-box engine — to XSL-FO, then to PDF — so the formatting specification a program already owns, and has already had approved, does not have to be rewritten in XSL-FO to be usable.
The usual migration path away from a legacy publishing toolchain asks a program to reimplement its page layout in a different stylesheet language. That is a substantial piece of work, it produces output that has to be re-validated against the original, and it is often the single largest line item in a migration estimate. Rendering the FOSI as written removes that step.
| Page geometry | Page sets, page specifications, margins and column geometry as declared in the FOSI. |
| Page sequences | Per-chapter sequences with restarting folios. |
| Change marking | Change bars and change levels. |
| Generated text | savetext and usetext. |
| Rules and boxes | Boxing, ruling and leaders. |
| Tabs | The FOSI’s own tab positions. |
These are documented rather than discovered, and they are the same list carried in the capability matrix.
Output is measured against Arbortext-published PDF, not assumed to match it. Where a program needs vendor-specific behaviour rather than what the specification says, that is an explicit option rather than the default — the specification wins unless a program asks otherwise.
FOSI is one of several output paths. Ironmark also publishes through XSLT and XSL-FO stylesheets, and each SDM package can carry multiple output profiles for the same standard. Apache FOP is an optional add-on for the XSL-FO backend and is not required for FOSI publishing; the in-box renderer needs no Java.
Capability matrix · Standards · FAQ 4.02 — using your own FOSI or XSL stylesheets