title: Alternative to Altova's MissionKit
body: <p>Anyone know of any good alternatives (other than those listed below which really are only good at specific XML development tasks)?</p>
  
  <p>The Why (if you're interested):<br>
  I've been doing XML development on and off for years now, but someone brought XMLSpy to my attention recently, and it is awesome - the price isn't.</p>
  
  <p>Lately I've been using a combination of:<br>
  Notepad++ (modifying XML)<br>
  EditX (validating/debugging XML)<br>
  Eclipse (designing schemas) and<br>
  MS Visual Studio (validating schemas)</p>
  
  <p>...based on which makes the task(s) easiest.</p>
  
  <p>But, I've just found out that we will be using XSL transformations to generate XML in the future. I've never used mission kit before, but I'm just short of positive XMLSpy replaces all the above mentioned tool for XML development. And if their XSL tools are anywhere near the caliber of XMLSpy ...simply put I need it.</p>
  
  <p>I don't believe that I can convince the budgeting types to buy licenses for MissionKit at $1000 each (won't stop me from trying).</p>
  
  <p>In the mean while some research on alternatives won't hurt, but a few Google queries has only revealed that not many people pay for Altova's (overpriced?) software as there are mostly links to P2P sites for downloading a more free-like version of MissionKit.</p>