My first experience with <oXygen/>

[TimP]

I'm a professional writer just now authoring new academic material for my master of arts, so I bought <oXygen/> after trying it for few days. As much as I had used other XML-oriented products before (Framemaker+XML, XML Spy, Stylus Studio, Jedit with XML plug-ins) it's hard to believe that you're selling this product, even at the professional version cost, so cheaply. Framemaker is $1200 and offers no advantages over oXygen that I can see.

Anyway, I've got a couple of suggestions (which I always have for new products) that you might be interested in.

The IDE of UEStudio by IDM Computer Solutions exhibits functionality that you might consider. One trick, in particular, is the ability to add items to the help menu - links to PDFs and CHMs, external web sites, etc. Considering the immense complexity of the XML world, there's a real need for users to have a lot of documentation at hand. Another crafty feature of theirs is saved IDE configurations - really handy when you're bopping around between projects of different kinds and you'd like to re-arrange the workspace for each project.

I hate the way help info always stays on top and has no minimize button. It's impossible to follow a procedure without about 3 acres of screen space at hand.

I'm working in Docbook 4.4, and I'd like to stop seeing those element descriptions popping up all over the place in Author mode when the mouse point is left sitting over content. Maybe there's an option to control this, but I can't find it.

More later. Thanks for reading this far.

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

The IDE of UEStudio by IDM Computer Solutions exhibits functionality that you might consider. One trick, in particular, is the ability to add items to the help menu - links to PDFs and CHMs, external web sites, etc. Considering the immense complexity of the XML world, there's a real need for users to have a lot of documentation at hand.

We will consider allowing the Help menu to grow with some items. Thank you for the suggestion. However I think creating some bookmarks in your favorite Web browser is the usual way of bookmarking the documentation that you need.

Another crafty feature of theirs is saved IDE configurations - really handy when you're bopping around between projects of different kinds and you'd like to re-arrange the workspace for each project.

In Oxygen it is called project level options. In the Preferences dialog opened from menu Options -> Preferences most panels have two radio buttons at the bottom: Global Options and Project Options. You can save a set of related preferences in the current project opened in the Project view by selecting the Project Options button in that panel. For re-arranging the workspace at a project level go to the panel Perspectives Layout of the Preferences dialog.

You can share the preferences with other users by sharing the Oxygen project in which they were saved.

I hate the way help info always stays on top and has no minimize button. It's impossible to follow a procedure without about 3 acres of screen space at hand.

There are some implementation problems with two window frames opened from the same Java application. Just open the Help as a new application from Start menu -> Programs -> Oxygen XML Editor -> Oxygen User Manual. The new window can be minimized and maximized as an independent window.

I'm working in Docbook 4.4, and I'd like to stop seeing those element descriptions popping up all over the place in Author mode when the mouse point is left sitting over content. Maybe there's an option to control this, but I can't find it.

You can disable the tooltip description from Options -> Preferences -> Editor -> Author -- Show caret position tooltip.


Regards,
Sorin

[TimP]

Thanks so much for the info. The project settings especially is one I'm going to exploit. One item doesn't seem to work as expected though:

"You can disable the tooltip description from Options -> Preferences -> Editor -> Author -- Show caret position tooltip."

Those pesky tooltips keep coming.

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

I am sorry, for the tooltips displayed when the mouse pointer is over an element you have to disable the option Show annotations as tooltip available from Options -> Preferences -> Editor -> Content Completion -> Annotations. These tooltips display the annotations set in the schema (XML Schema, Relax NG schema, DTD) associated with the document and used mainly by the content completion assistant when new elements are inserted in the XML document.


Regards,
Sorin