Several Amara users have mentioned trying to build for Windows but running into problems, or a requirement for .NET. Sylvain Hellegouarch comes to the rescue with a binary package he built using Amara 1.0, latest 4Suite CVS, Python 2.4.1 and .NET 1.1 (latest patches). Windows users can install this package without having to worry about compilers or any other such hassles. Sylvain posted it under the default name generated by distutils, but I renamed it as appropriate and I'm hosting it on the Amara home page, and in the Amara contrib FTP area. Please let Sylvain and me know (by posting to the 4Suite mailing list with "[Amara]" in the subject) if you have any trouble with this package.
Meanwhile work on the 1.2 branch continues. I've got up to 30% speed and memory usage improvement over Amara Bindery 1.0, in large part by moving from PySax to 4Suite's undocumented Saxlette library (all in highly optimized C). Jeremy is also working on suspend/resume for 4Suite's parser, which would allow for a huge performance boost for pushbind. I'll try to start working on RELAX NG features if I get a chance this week.