Oxygen XML Author vs Oxygen XML Editor

[ann.jensen]

Hello,
I have trialled Oxygen XML Author and am getting ready to order some licenses but am now wondering if we really need Author or will Editor suffice for most of our users. Our intention is to have our BAs, developers and QA engineers (all content authors) to collaborate on documentation content using an Oxygen tool and then have a content administrator/tech writer polish the content to ensure that it is well structured according to DITA and that it is maximising content reuse etc. We definitely want to have document templates for the content authors.
Would Oxygen XML editor suffice for the content authors with 1-2 Oxygen Author licenses for the content admins?
any advice appreciated,
Regards,
Ann

[Costin]

Hello,

Please note that you should address all licensing and sales related question on our support email address (support AT oxygenxml DOT com), instead of posting them on the forum.

Depending on what you consider you would like to achieve using oXygen, you may need either just the Author, or the Editor (in fact, Editor is our flagship product, not Author).

There are three different types of oXygen XML.
- oXygen XML Editor is our flagship product, containing both authoring and development support (Editor = Author + Developer).
- oXygen XML Developer is specially designed for developers (XML schema/ XSLT/ XQuery development and debugging)
- oXygen XML Author is based on visual editing and was specially created for the content authors (keeps only the relevant authoring features of the Editor). Comes with support for common document types like DITA, Docbook, TEI, etc.

So if you need only to visually edit XML documents and publish them to various output formats, then you most probably need only the Author functionality.
If you perchance need also to develop XSL stylesheets or schemas, then you need the development features as well, so you should consider the Editor.

Each of the oXygen XML license types (Editor/Author/Developer) comes in two commercial editions : Professional and Enterprise.

The functional differences between the Professional and Enterprise editions of <oXygen/> XML is that the Enterprise edition offers support for commercial databases (Mark Logic, IBM DB2, Oracle, X-Hive/DB, Microsoft SQL Server), SharePoint CMS integration, and also the possibility to search in the Review panel.

A page that shows the differences between the different product types and editions of oXygen can be found at:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/feature_matrix.html
To easily see only the relevant differences between the products, you should also check the "Hide common features"

According to the above information about our products, please let us know our support email I specified at the beginning of my post what type / edition / licensing model of which product(s) are you interested in and I will provide you the corresponding quote for any requested quantity you might want.

Best Regards,
Costin

[Benny]

Hi,

I have as well a question related to the differences between Author and Editor

In the above post you say:

"So if you need only to visually edit XML documents and publish them to various output formats, then you most probably need only the Author functionality. If you perchance need also to develop XSL stylesheets or schemas, then you need the development features as well, so you should consider the Editor."

But for me it is unclear at which moment I need to develop XSL stylesheets or schemas. As I understand XLS is also used to format the output format right? it determines how my PDF will look like. But exporting to PDF is part of the Author product. So when will for example the author build in pdf export function not be enough anymore and will I have to switch to XSL stylesheets?

Thanks for your reply

[Costin]

Hi Benny,

Most probably you will find the output, obtained by applying the default transformation scenarios defined in oXygen for the common XML document types, satisfying.

Custom XSL stylesheets become handy in case you need to customize the output in order to make the resulted documents look different by the ones you would have otherwise obtained from the default scenarios.
For example, you can edit the default transformation scenarios and add a custom XSL developed by you, which could override the default XSLT transformation.
Developing your own XSL stylesheets is also needed in case you would want to define a transformation scenario from scratch, creating a custom XML transformation with XSLT.

For outputting common XML document types to PDF however, will be most probably sufficient for you, without the need to develop custom XSL stylesheets.

Regards,
Costin