Differences between Eclipse version and standalong version

[dcramer]

Hi there,
I'm comparing the Eclipse version of oXygen 12 beta and the standalone. They seem very similar, but I there are a couple differences I see:

* Find/Replace in the Eclipse version is less powerful than in the standalone oXygen.
* Editor text zoom. In the full eclipse you can change the editor text size. Or perhaps I hadn't found the keybinding yet for that.

Is there a list of differences in functionality between the two?

Thanks,
David

[dcramer]

Btw., after posting that I discovered the Search menu in Eclipse. It have some of the functionality but doesn't seem to be quite the same thing.

Thanks,
David

[dcramer]

Ok, I think all the searching functionality is there in the Eclipse version, just in different places.

I found in the help for the Eclipse version the following, but it doesn't seem to work for me (using CTRL - Function - + on my laptop since the Numeric Keypad is only available via the fn key).

"The font size of the current WYSIWYG-like editor can be increased and decreased on the fly with the same actions as in the Text editor:

Ctrl - NumPad+ or Ctrl - + or Ctrl - mouse wheel - Increases font size.
Ctrl - NumPad- or Ctrl - - or Ctrl - mouse wheel - Decreases font size.
Ctrl - NumPad0 or Ctrl - 0 - Restores font size to the size specified in Preferences. "

Perhaps that's a bug in Oxygen 12 Beta for Eclipse?

David

[adrian]

This is a "forgotten feature" that was also missing in v11.2.
Thanks for letting us know. I've added it to the issue tracking tool.

As a workaround you can adjust the font manually from the Options: Window -> Preferences -> oXygen/Author -> Fonts, Change(Author)

Regards,
Adrian

[dcramer]

Ok, thanks. I'm happy to hear that the goal is that the versions be functionally identical.

I also have a related question:

The oxygen settings for the standalone versions are stored in oxyOptionsSa12.0.xml C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\com.oxygenxml (or on Windows 7 under C:\Users\<username>\AppData\...). But the Eclipse version doesn't pick those up or seem to modify the settings in that location. Where does the Eclipse version store its settings? I'm asking because I'm planning on distributing a pre-configured version of Oxygen to users and so would want to be able to give them a modified default oxyOptionsSa12.0.xml file.

Thanks,
David

[adrian]

The options of the Oxygen plugin are kept in the eclipse workspace settings:
[workspace_folder]\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.runtime\.settings\com.oxygenxml.editor.prefs
The properties file contains a single property whose value is the entire content of the Oxygen options XML file.

Regards,
Adrian

[dcramer]

Thanks Adrian!

[dcramer]

Hi there,
I got around to looking at this more closely and comparing the versions side-by-side. Let me first say that the Find->Find/Replace in Files dialog in the Standalone version is a wonderful thing and really distinguishes oXygen from other wisywoo XML editors.

From what I can tell, the Eclipse version of oXygen is lacking the following features that the standalone version has:
* Find->Find/Replace in Files
* Find->Quick Find
* Find->Find All

Instead of Find->Find/Replace in Files, the Eclipse version of oXygen instead has a feature that is part of Eclipse itself:
* Search->File

But this is Search->File much harder to understand and use than Find->Find/Replace in Files and lacks some of its functionality. It lacks the whole "Enable XML options" section and it is more difficult to set the scope (e.g. you don't have the "Specified path" option. You can't search "All opened files").

I see that the Eclipse version of Oxygen can't open a project file created in the standalone version. So I guess the Eclipse analog for a project is a workspace or a working set.

I would like to see the Eclipse version's search feature brought closer to the sandalone version's. I understand that there may be some differences due to the Eclipse platform, but I think the Eclipse version would benefit from having the "Enable XML options" feature and the search scoping features.

Thanks,
David

[adrian]

Hi,

Some of the features of the standalone edition couldn't be exactly replicated in Eclipse. The Find/Replace is one such example. Eclipse does have its own search/replace mechanisms but they are not XML-aware.

The eclipse/standalone projects are not interchangeable because they are built around different concepts. Eclipse works on a project mapped directly to the file system, while Oxygen works with logical folders and links though it can also map folders from the file system.

I believe that contributing to Eclipse's Find/Replace dialog was at one time considered, but limitations in the API at that time made it impractical to implement. I'll add a feature request and we'll reinvestigate if the API from Eclipse 3.3 or later allows this.

Regards,
Adrian

[dcramer]

Thanks for the background information Adrian.

David