How to export/save all current settings into backup file?

[pstein]

Occasionally I want to backup all my current settings into a file (for later restore or restore on a Oxygen installation on another computer).

How can I export/save all current settings?

Peter

[adrian]

Hi,

You can save the current options to a file from the main menu: Options > Export Global Options.
You can import them back with: Options > Import Global Options.

The view and toolbar layout (arrangement of views and toolbars in the Oxygen window) is kept separately. You can save it with Window > Save Layout and load it with Window > Load Layout. Note however that we do not guarantee the compatibility of the saved window layouts across different versions of Oxygen. Also, saved window layouts are definitely incompatible across different Oxygen applications (e.g. a window layout saved from Editor will not load correctly in Author).

Note that the license key is not saved in the options file, so you'll have to enter it again on the new machine.


An alternative solution is to simply copy/archive directly from the file system the Oxygen options folder. This contains the option files and layouts for all versions of Oxygen ever used, dictionaries and words learned by the spell checker, installed extensions/add-ons and project index ('lucene') and project cache ('projectCache') folders. You can skip the last two since they are dynamically re-generated.

Depending on the platform the options folder for Oxygen XML Editor is located as follows:
- Windows XP - [user-home-folder]\Application Data\com.oxygenxml
- Windows Vista/7/8 - [user-home-folder]\AppData\Roaming\com.oxygenxml
- Mac OS X - [user-home-folder]/Library/Preferences/com.oxygenxml
- Linux - [user-home-folder]/.com.oxygenxml
The options folder for the Oxygen XML Author product has an additional suffix, '.author', so it's actually com.oxygenxml.author.
The options folder for the Oxygen XML Developer product has an additional suffix, '.developer', so it's actually com.oxygenxml.developer.

In Windows if you have trouble locating the AppData/Application Data folder (it is hidden), open Windows Explorer, type in the Address bar %APPDATA% and press Enter.

Regards,
Adrian

[pstein]

Thank you for reply.

One more question:

Can I put the options folder

[user-home-folder]\AppData\Roaming\com.oxygenxml

somewhere else (e.g. in a sub-directory of the Oxygen installation folder) ?

Peter

[adrian]

Hi,

You can do this by adding an argument (a custom Java system property) in the Oxygen launcher configuration files (or startup scripts). Note that you'll have to do this for the launchers/scripts of all Oxygen tools that you wish to use this way.
The argument should look like this (note the absolute path):
-Dcom.oxygenxml.customOptionsDir=/absolute/pathto/my/custom/options/dir

For Windows/Linux you'll have to edit the .vmoptions file(s) (e.g. oxygen15.1.vmoptions) and add this parameter on a new line.
Note that the parameters from the ".vmoptions" file are only used if you start Oxygen with the corresponding executable (e.g. "oxygen15.1") launcher (or the desktop shortcut). If you are using the command line startup script "oxygen.bat"/"oxygen.sh", you should modify these instead.

For OS X you have to edit the Info.plist file from the .app/Contents folder and append the argument to the value of the VMOptions key.

Regards,
Adrian

[pstein]

Thank it works (even with relative path ..\myprefs).

However wouldn't it be fine to have just ONE location/file where users have to specify the
new settings folder?

This can be achieved by a new file

global.vmoptions

which contains such arguments as
-Dcom.oxygenxml.customOptionsDir
for ALL tools!.

Second best but also possible: What about introducing an environment variable which can be set and point to the customers settings directory?

Peter

[adrian]

Hi,

We already have a few requests logged on our issue tracking tool for a common .vmoptions file for all tools (for other purposes). I'll add another vote for this. This will be analyzed and implemented in a future version of Oxygen.

Regards,
Adrian