Software can be written for XML-based systems to automate simple tasks such as validating entries, calculating values, sorting, and similar operations. An example of this is "automatic composition."
Often writers will continually adjust individual page layouts as they compose documents. This obviously can take up a great deal of time. Companies that have measured this time estimate that as much as 40% of an author's time is sometimes spent on page layouts. One solution to this problem is to create software that lets the computer do the page layouts, while letting the author concentrate on creating new content. This can be done with software created for XML-based documents.