[7] HoTMetaL was one of a series of applications created by SoftQuad for editing, viewing and publishing structured (SGML and XML) content.

[5] It was sold with a suite of associated programs, corresponding to AT&T's Documenter's Workbench, under the name SoftQuad Publishing Software (SQPS).

[5][13] By virtue of its early lead and its charismatic leader, Yuri Rubinsky, SoftQuad provided considerable leadership to the nascent SGML community.

At the same time, the Toronto development team, led by David A. Keldsen, joined Interleaf to help focus the company on content management and create new products.

The NCSA (National Center for Supercomputer Applications) includes the [free] version of Panorama into its Mosaic delivery.

[2][3][4] SoftQuad was able to beat other products to the market by virtue of the fact that HTML was defined as an application (Document Type Definition) of SGML.

By virtue of this strong base and early lead, HoTMetaL became very popular as a tool for creating HTML web sites.

[26] On the basis of HoTMetaL's early success, SoftQuad was able to go public on the NASDAQ stock exchange as SWEBF.

[27] Over time, however, companies like Microsoft and Netscape increasingly saw HTML authoring tools as loss leaders to tempt web developers into their product suites.

Alpha's software was intended to be integrated with SoftQuad's to enable Web-based publishing of database-stored information.

Alpha Software's Richard Rabins was made an Executive Vice President of SoftQuad International Inc.

[31] On October 9, 1998, SoftQuad was delisted from NASDAQ (but not the Toronto Stock Exchange) after falling under the minimum share price guidelines.

[33] In December 2000, SoftQuad bought Advanced Data Engineering (ADEI), a conversion tools company from Petaluma, California.

[35][36] From a press release of the time: "MarketAgility Enterprise is a server-based solution built on Microsoft SQL Server and is administered through a simple browser interface.

It automates the collection, normalization and incremental updating of product information from wherever it resides in an enterprise into an XML-based master catalog.

In 2004, Just Systems acquired SoftQuad's remaining assets, including its flagship XMetaL product, from Blast Radius.

In March 2000, SoftQuad merged with American Sports Machine, effectively becoming an OTCBB public company.

Unlike tools like the popular XML Spy, XMetaL used a word processor metaphor and was designed to be used by writers and not programmers.