The Bora document processor is a software application which translates BDML documents into PDF, HTML, ePUB, and Mobi (Kindle) targets. Publishing to all targets can be achieved from a single XML based document source and accompanying CSS. With BDML there is no need to write, edit and format separate files for each final target layout. Instead, the user can use a single source language and then export to multiple formats. BDML also supports target specific CSS styling. A single BDML document can thus have one or more common CSS stylesheets, plus smaller, target specific CSS stylesheets capturing any style differences between targets.
BDML was created in 2007 with the aim of providing a feature complete technical writing markup language with the smallest set of schema elements and the easiest learning curve.
In addition to the Bora document processor, the AGPL licensed BDML source pack can be downloaded from the public BDML Git repository. The BDML source pack contains the BdmlHtml.xsl XSLT 1.0 transform, which can be used via a standard XSLT processor for technical documentation, help systems, and websites. The BdmlHtml.xsl transform can also be used for direct browser loading, bypassing the need for ahead of time HTML translation of BDML files.