SP has built-in knowledge of many more base character sets . This allows parsing of well-formed XML documents, whether or not valid. There is now generalized support for architectural form processing . Documentation is now in HTML format. A BASE catalog entry can be used to specify a base system identifier for resolving relative storage object identifiers occurring in the catalog.
Programs have a -E option that sets the maximum number of errors.
SP can be built as a DLL under Win32. The syntax of system identifiers has completely changed. It applies to each entry individually rather than to the entire catalog. The -w options of nsgmls and spam have been enhanced. In spam, the -w option takes an argument as with nsgmls.