Inserting sysmbols support in eclipse oXygen!

[mu258770]

Hi team,

In oxygen author standalone version 16.1, we can insert symbols using Edit -> Insert from Character Map... option. The same is explained in the below link,

http://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/ug-oxygen/ ... olbar.html

But oxygen author 16.1 eclipse plugin does not contain an option as "Insert from Character Map...".

Please let us know whether in Eclipse plugin version of oxygen, symbols insertion is not supported? If supported please let us know how we can insert?

Thanks in advance!

Best Regards,
Shabeer

[Radu]

Hi Shabeer,

The Oxygen plugin for Eclipse does not yet have a Character Map dialog. It has a drop-down Symbols Toolbar with certain symbols added by default to it. And you can add more symbols to the toolbar (add the symbols mostly used when editing for example).
As a workaround you can also use the Character Map in the operating system.

Regards,
Radu

[mu258770]

Hi Radu,

Thank you for the response!

It has a drop-down Symbols Toolbar with certain symbols added by default to it

I tried to find the same, but could not find. Can you please specify exactly where it is provided. I am using oxygen author 16.1 eclipse plugin.

Thanks and Regards,
Shabeer

[Radu]

Hi Shabeer,

Please see this screenshot:

http://www.oxygenxml.com/forum/files/symbolsTB.png

Regards,
Radu

[mu258770]

Hi Radu,

Thank you for the quick response!

I checked the screenshot and could find the symbol in screenshot. But the same symbol is not there in the oxygen I have installed . Also I can see changes in some other icons also.

Please let me know which version of oxygen, the shared screenshot is taken. Mine is oxygen author 16.1.
Also please let me know whether the same is not supported for this particular version.

Thanks and Regards,
Shabeer

[Radu]

Hi Shabeer,

I double checked, re-installed Oxygen 16.1 Author plugin from the Oxygen update site and the symbols toolbar appears in the proper location at the end of the XML toolbar.
Please double check you are running Eclipse with the proper Oxygen XML Author plugin version installed.

Regards,
Radu

[mu258770]

Hi Radu,

Still I could not find the symbol insertion icon in the toolbar.

In the shared screenshot, one thing I observed is that it has the symbol of oxygen "Editor" plugin, not oxygen "Author" plugin.

So is the symbol insertion support there only in Editor version and not in Author? Please clarify.

Regards,
Shabeer

[Radu]

Hi Shabeer,

So sorry, when I double checked I accidentally installed the XML Editor plugin instead of XML Author.
The fact that the Symbols toolbar is not present for XML Author is a bug and we'll try to rectify it in one of the 16.1 minor bug fix releases which we periodically release:

http://www.oxygenxml.com/rssBuildID.xml

Regards,
Radu

[mu258770]

Hi Radu,

Thanks a lot for the clarification provided!

We have checked more on the options available in oxygen author 16.1 standalone version and compared the same with author eclipse plugin.

We can see many options are missing from the eclipse plugin. Below I listed some of those options,

Edit -> Bookmarks, Breakpoints, Check Spelling (this we can see in toolbar, not in menus), Check Spelling in Files
Tools -> Compare files, directories...etc
And some options from other menus also.

Please let us know whether the mentioned options are not applicable for the eclipse plugin version or is it there in some other way or is it missed in eclipse plugin.

Regards,
Shabeer

[Radu]

Hi Shabeer,

Please see some comments about each of these differences you found:

Edit -> Bookmarks

Eclipse has its own support for adding bookmarks in opened documents (Edit menu->Add Bookmark). So you should use that when the Oxygen plugin for Eclipse is used.

Breakpoints

Breakpoints are only useful when debugging XSLT stylesheets or XQuery.
XSLT and XQuery debugging perspectives for Eclipse are only available for the XML Editor and XML Developer products (so they are not available for XML Author).
On Eclipse you can add breakpoints for debugging XSLT when working in the debugger perspective using another similar way.

Check Spelling (this we can see in toolbar, not in menus)

The manual check spelling button is present on the toolbar both for standalone application and Eclipse plugin.
Indeed for the Eclipse plugin the manual spell checking action was not added to the main menus. We will consider adding it.

There is also the option for automatic spell checking which exists in the preferences both for the standalone and eclipse plugin.

Check Spelling in Files

You can right click in the Project view and choose to check spelling in files both for the standalone and Eclipse plugin. You can also right click in a DITA Map opened in the DITA Maps Manager and do the same thing.
Indeed for the Eclipse plugin the Check Spelling in Files was not added to the main menus. We will consider adding it.

Tools -> Compare files, directories...

The file and folder comparison tools are not available at all in the Oxygen plugin for Eclipse.

Regards,
Radu

[nagang]

Hi Radu,

Please let us know the exact differences between stand-alone oxygen author version and Eclipse plugin version. If you can provide some list of differences of the two, then it will be helpful.

Thanks in advance!
Regards,
Navaneetha

[Radu]

Hi Navaneetha,

We have a feature matrix here:

http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/feature_matrix.html

The features which are only available in the standalone version are marked with a gray dot.
Features which are available both in standalone and eclipse are marked with a black dot.

Regards,
Radu

[nagang]

Hi Radu,

Thank you for the response!

The link provides the list of differences in Features, which are not straight forward linked to Menu/Tool bar elements/buttons.

Could you please provide the list of differences in Menu/Tool bar elements/buttons in standalone and eclipse oxygen author 16.1

Regards,
Navaneetha

[Radu]

Hi Navaneetha,

Sorry but we do not have another list of differences specifically related to menu and toolbar entries.

Regards,
Radu

[ionela]

Hello,

Just to update the thread, this problem has been resolved in the latest maintenance build of Oxygen 16.1, 2015040615 (released on April 8th):

Eclipse plugin: The Symbols toolbar was missing from the Oxygen XML Author and Oxygen XML Developer plugins.

You can download it from our web site:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/download.html

The list of bug-fixes can be found here:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/build_history.html#2015040615

You can follow the release/build RSS feed here:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/rssBuildID.xml

Let us know if you encounter further problems with this new build.

Regards,
Ionela

[mu258770]

Hi team,

We have started using oxygen 17.0 with eclipse 4.3 and we can see the symbols can be added from toolbar.

But we would like to customize the existing symbols with some more additions to the dialog. ie we need to add more symbols to the existing.

Please let us know how we can proceed on this.

Regards,
Shabeer

[alex_jitianu]

Hello Shabeer,

The number of recently used symbols is limited to 20 but you can put have your own symbols like this:

Code: Select all

PluginWorkspaceProvider.getPluginWorkspace().setGlobalObjectProperty("recently.used.characters", "abcdefg");

Starting with version 17.1 there will be a Character Map dialog for Eclipse too.

Best regards,
Alex

[mu258770]

Hi Alex,

Thank you for your response!

We would like to get more details on symbols:

1. In your reply you are mentioning about changing the existing symbols with the mentioned code. How we can do it in practical. Which file should be modified and what setup we need.

2. Is it possible to add more than 20 symbols in the dialog by default. Currently if we do any change, it is reflecting in the workspace. We need to share the package to the user with customized symbols dialog with more than 20 symbols. Actually we need the similar character map dialog as the oxygen standalone one in the current 17.0 oxygen eclipse plugin. Is it possible to make that customization and how we can do the same.

3. As you mentioned, if the symbols support is extending in eclipse oxygen similar to the oxygen standalone, then when this version (oxygen author 17.1) will be released. Please let us know the plan for the same.

Thanks and regards,
Shabeer

[alex_jitianu]

Hi Shabeer,

1. As far as I remember you have an Eclipse plugin that uses our extensions points for various customizations. You need to invoke the code I gave you in this plugin.

2. If you do as described at 1. then all users will have the same predefined 20 symbols without having to change anything.
If you need more than 20 symbols I suggest you develop a custom action, similar with our own, and put it on the toolbar. This action can present any number of symbols as you will have full control over it. In this custom action you could group these symbols into categories to make it easier for the user to find a given symbol into so many others.

3. Version 17.1 is scheduled to be released in mid October.

Best regards,
Alex

[mu258770]

Hi Alex,

Thank you for the response!

We have tried to invoke the code from our plugin and it worked fine .

As you prescribed, we added our own symbols, but we tried with more than 20. Good thing happened here is, we are getting more than 20 symbols in the dialog.

But the issue comes when user tries to add a new symbol to the dialog. Then the number of symbols are getting reduced to 20. All the symbols after fifth row are removed and newly added symbol is added in the beginning.

Is there any way we can change this behavior, ie we need to add more than 20 symbols to the dialog by default (which we are able to do now also), and if user tries to add more it should add it at the beginning and the number of symbols should not decrease but increase (this is what we are missing now).

Please let us know whether it is possible without any customization to the dialog.

Regards,
Shabeer

[alex_jitianu]

Hi Shabeer,

I see... When adding a new symbol, the option is updated and only 20 characters are stored. I can't think of any solution right now but perhaps I can do something for version 17.1 which is to be released in a few weeks. We could add a new option to control the number of recently used symbols and you could set this option too.

Best regards,
Alex

[mu258770]

Hi Alex,

Thank you for the quick response!

We are facing one other issue.

We would like to insert character entities to the symbols dialog, for example, &, < etc. But we are not able to insert the same using the code provided. If we are inserting, it is splitting the character entity to multiple symbols.

Say, if we are giving the code as below,

PluginWorkspaceProvider.getPluginWorkspace().setGlobalObjectProperty("recently.used.characters", "&<");

then it inserts as & a m p ; & l t ; in the symbols dialog.

We need it to be & <.

Please let us know how we can insert the character entity to the symbols dialog.

Regards,
Shabeer

[alex_jitianu]

Hi Shabeer,

You are inserting these symbols inside the Author page? Special characters & < should be automatically serialized as entities when saving the document. I will add an issue and we will resolve this for version 17.1. Are the built-in character entities your only concern or would you like to be able to insert other symbols from the recently used ones as entities?

Best regards,
Alex

[mu258770]

Hi Alex,

We have one other observation related to a symbol. We added logical AND (∧) and logical OR (∨) characters to the symbols dialog using the java code provided by you and created the plugin and tested the same in oxygen 17 eclipse version. The two symbols are appearing properly in the symbols dialog. But we have the following observation once it is inserted to a document.

While testing, we have found that these character symbols are not appearing properly in the oxygen author view after inserting it from the dialog. This issue is not always coming. If we are inserting ∧ and ∨ in middle of a sentence or next to next then both are appearing incorrect in the Author view of oxygen (appearing as a box) . But in some scenarios it is appearing properly.

For us, these two character symbols are important to work.

Please let us know how we can fix this.

Regards,
Shabeer

[alex_jitianu]

Hi Shabeer,

The characters are not rendered correctly probably because the used font doesn't have glyphs for them. Please make sure you are using a font that can render them, for example SansSerif. To change the font used by the author mode you can either:
1. In the CSS, you can use the font-family property to impose a font
2. In Preferences, on page oxygen XML Editor / Fonts you can change the default font for the author mode. Please note that this is just the default. The CSS could impose a different font.

Best regards,
Alex

[Radu]

Hi,

Just to update this thread, both the issue with inserting "<" and the issue to specify via the API the number of recently used characters have been solved in 17.1.
To specify the number of recently used chars via the API you can use:

Code: Select all

PluginWorkspaceProvider.getPluginWorkspace().setGlobalObjectProperty("recently.used.characters.size", [INTEGER_VALUE]);

Regards,
Radu

[Radu]

Hi,

Also in Oxygen 17.1 the Character Map dialog should also work in the Eclipse plugin.

Regards,
Radu

[mu258770]

Hi,

We are currently moving to oXygen author 18.0 eclipse plugin version. We can see that character map dialog support is enabled in the latest version. Glad to see that working

In our environment, we would not like to provide all those options and symbols which are available in the current dialog. So we would like some customization in the dialog.

Please let us know whether customizing the same is possible (hiding some symbols and some options) ?

If not, we may need to hide the particular option "More symbols.." for the time being. Is that also possible?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Shabeer

[Radu]

Hi Shabeer,

I looked but we do not seem to have API to remove the "More symbols..." entry. Also the character map dialog is created on our side and again it is not API and cannot be modified by you.
Maybe you could remove the entire "Symbols" toolbar button that you provide and create your own button with your custom functionality.

Regards,
Radu