New in ToolBook 9.5 is a new XML file format for ToolBook. The new tbkx format allows complete specification of a ToolBook book: it is a zipped archive of XML files specifying pages, backgrounds and other objects along with their properties. The XML references other files embedded in the tbkx zip archive such as shared scripts, bitmaps and other media.
The tbkx file format was introduced to enable the creation of a plug-in for PowerPoint that published a slide deck to ToolBook. This works by clicking a new button in PowerPoint that creates a tbkx file which is in turn read by ToolBook to create a native tbk book. However, there is absolutely no reason why this tbkx file should not come from some other XML-aware application - online or offline.
The only shortcoming in this first release (based on the beta of 9.5) is that you can not save a native tbk file as a tbkx. So, for now, creation of template books could be somewhat time consuming unless your book happens to be based on a PowerPoint storyboard. Hopefully though, this will be resolved in a future release. Even with this draw back, this is a great new direction for ToolBook.
Documentation is available online at http://www.toolbook.com/documents/ToolBook_XML_Format_0808.pdf
