Oxygen.exe as default program on Windows 7

[PaulHermans]

I have an xproc file with extension xpl.
In Windows 7 I want to assign Oxygen.exe as default program for xpl files.
So in the Open with -> Choose default program -> Browse, I'm not able to select Oxygen.exe.

I can choose treeEditor.exe, largeFileViewer.exe, author.exe but not oxygen.exe.

[adrian]

Hello,

I've tried this but it worked fine for me. As soon as I picked oxygen.exe, Oxygen XML Editor 11.2 was added to the list of programs and I could use it for the file association(the one from the Open With dialog).

I'm not able to select Oxygen.exe.

I'm not sure if I understand this, you cannot select oxygen.exe or there isn't one there to select?

Could you provide a screenshot of what's happening?
If possible please send it to support@oxygenxml.com.

Regards,
Adrian

[ameye]

I have the same problem with Oxygen 12. I want to associate a new file extension (.xlf) to Oxygen so I use the Browse button from Windows' "Open with" dialog (Oxygen does not appear in the Other Programs list). I browse to Oxygen.exe and click Select, but nothing is added in the Open with dialog, as if I had not selected any thing.

It worked fine when I had Oxygen 11. For the sake of it, I uninstalled and reinstalled Oxygen 12, thinking that maybe something had not been register correctly, but I still have the same problem.

[ra0543]

I have this problem too with adding Author to the "Open with ..." right-click context menu in Explorer for *.xml files and it began after upgrading to Oxygen 12.0. I'm using Vista Business SP2.

I think it is happening because during the installation of Oxygen 12 the process of first removing Oxygen 11 didn't clean up all the file association keys in the Windows registry (in the OpenWithList), and as a result they are still there somewhere and pointing to oxygen.exe or author.exe in the folder where Oxygen 11 was installed (but those files no longer exist) and this blocks creating a new association with Oxygen 12 (which has executables of the same name, only in a different folder). Either that or Oxygen 11 didn't deregister itself properly from the registry and Oxygen 12 didn't register itself correctly over the top of the old registration. I guess a work round might be to create a symbolic link or join from the old installation folder of the previous version to the new folder, but really Oxygen should clean itself up properly when it uninstalls as part of an upgrade.

Any advice on how to solve this would be appreciated.

[ra0543]

OK I found the registry problem for Vista.

In

Code: Select all

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\author.exe\shell\open\command

the value set was

"

Code: Select all

C:\Program Files\Oxygen XML Editor 11\author.exe" "%1"

Changing this to

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\Oxygen XML Editor 12\author.exe" "%1"

re-enabled the link I had on my right-click "Open with ..." menu.

I presume the same will work for

Code: Select all

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\oxygen.exe\shell\open\command

Perhaps this can be fixed in the Oxygen installer, though.

[adrian]

Hello,

Editing the registry is one way of working around the problem.
I can confirm the registry keys found by ra0543.
For Oxygen:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\oxygen.exe\shell\open\command
For Author:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\author.exe\shell\open\command
They are the same for both Windows Vista and 7.

However I don't see how this could be fixed in the installer.
Even if this registry key is not created by the installer, Windows Explorer creates this key by itself when you go through 'Open with' -> 'Choose default program' -> Browse. Any application picked in that Browse dialog is added to the application list from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications.

Once you've added an application with an executable name you can't add another that has the same executable name even though it's from a different location. This is a bug in the Windows Explorer "Open With" dialog.

We'll investigate for a proper workaround for this. So far the only solution I see is to remove this registry key(oxygen.exe or author.exe) when the application is uninstalled. But this does not resolve the problem when you have multiple versions of Oxygen installed side by side.

Regards,
Adrian

[ra0543]

You could add a version number to the filename and its associated description, e.g.

author12.exe = Oxygen Author 12.0

author12-1.exe = Oxygen Author 12.1

etc.

That way you won't have successive versions using the same name even though they are in different places. But I would agree that this is not a very elegant solution, if it works at all. Still, it may be better than non-expert users having to mess with the registry.

[adrian]

We have had the version number in the launcher filename before(Oxygen 7.x and older) but it's rather messy looking and I believe it had some issues(at that time) when upgrading minor versions.

A more reasonable solution would be for the installer to add Oxygen/Author to the list of programs found in the "Open With" dialog. This would eliminate the need to browse for it from the file system.
We're investigating how we could do this in the installer scripts.

Regards,
Adrian

[adrian]

Hello,

I just wanted to let you know that starting with version 13.0 the application launcher also includes the version, so this problem has been avoided.
e.g.
oxygen13.0.exe
author13.0.exe

Regards,
Adrian