Syriac ligatures in Author mode

[friedemann_bach]

Dear forum,

I have some issues with displaying Syriac ligatures in Author mode. I am using "Estrangelo Edessa" font, which usually works well on my system. The ligatures do not display in Author mode (with setting of direction:rtl of course). The problem consists in Text mode. It works, however, very well for Arabic.

Do you have an idea what could cause that and how to fix this? I would appreciate any hint.

[Radu]

Hi,

We know about this problem but unfortunately it is not within our control to make this work, as a Java application in some ways we are limited by the problems of the Java application. This problem might probably be fixed when Java 1.9 is released though:

https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8050404

As a workaround, Oxygen is also available as a plugin for the Eclipse workbench. From what we tested a while ago the Oxygen plugin for Eclipse does not have the same problems with Syriac.

Regards,
Radu

[friedemann_bach]

Hi Radu,

thank you very much for the explanation. This helps a lot. Maybe I could also try the Early Access Release just to check whether the issue has already been resolved.

Best regards, and keep up the brilliant work!

[Radu]

Hi,

The Oxygen installation folder has a "jre" folder inside it. If you rename that folder to something else, Oxygen will start using the default Java JRE registered in the OS.
Of course if you are lucky and it fixes anything Java 1.9 might induce another set of problems, I don't think we tested Oxygen with Java 1.9 yet on our side.

Regards,
Radu

[friedemann_bach]

Excellent, I will give it a try. Thanks!

[bulk_bulk]

Dear forum,
I would appreciate if someone could tell me if the issue about displaying syriac ligatures in oXygen has been definitely solved because I would like to buy the editor right for that purpose. Currently my pc is running Java 8 (build 1.8.8_171-b11).

Thanks

[adrian]

Hi,

The Syriac ligatures issue can still be found in Java 8. The issue seems to have only been resolved in Java 9 and later. Since Oxygen (as of v20.1) still uses Java 8 out-of-the-box, it is still affected by this issue.
However, like my colleague mentioned before, Oxygen (since v20) can be run with Java 9 or 10, although we do not yet officially support running Oxygen with a version of Java other than 8. While we have started testing with Java 9 and 10 there are many other issues that need to be addressed before we can officially support them.

In conclusion, it is possible to run Oxygen 20.x or later with Java 9 or 10 and the Syriac ligatures issues should be resolved, however you may encounter other unforeseen issues with these versions of Java that could break Oxygen functionality.

Regards,
Adrian

[bulk_bulk]

Adrian, thank you very much for your exhaustive answer.
Since I am interested in exploiting all the potentials of oXygen without incurring problems of any kind, I will patiently wait for further developments.
Best Regards,
C.

[adrian]

Hi,

As a side note, it is also possible to use the Oxygen plugin for Eclipse to successfully work with Syriac script. Although the UI looks slightly different than the standalone distribution of Oxygen.
If you don't need any of the Eclipse IDE tools (Java development, Web, etc), you can use the Platform Runtime distribution of Eclipse (click on the released version and search for Platform Runtime). e.g. http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/dow ... ormRuntime
Download the Oxygen Plugin zip distribution.
Unpack both, the Oxygen Plugin zip distribution should be unpacked (or unpacked folder moved) to the eclipse/dropins folder (eclipse/dropins/oxygenxml.oxygen_20.1).

Regards,
Adrian

[bulk_bulk]

Hi (again), Adrian.

I followed (with calm) your suggestion and downloaded Eclipse Platform Runtime and the relative oXygen plugin.
I immediately run Eclipse, but when I try to open a new oXygen XML Project I have an error message,
as follows:

"The selected wizard cannot be started.
Reason:The Plug-in com.oxygenxml.editor was unable to load class com.oxygenxml.editor.newwizards.xml.XMLProjectWizard.
com.oxygenxml.editor.newwizards.xml.XMLProjectWizard.
In << Details:"com.oxygenxml.editor.newwizards.xml.XMLProjectWizard cannot be found by com.oxygenxml.editor_21.0.0.v2019040204"

Have you any idea for the reason why it happens?
Many thanks,
C.

[adrian]

Hi,

Which version of Eclipse did you download and what distribution (archive file name)?
Oxygen v21 was released in February and is not officially compatible with Eclipse 4.11 (2019-03) or later. Try using Eclipse 4.10 or older.

When I posted my previous reply, I tested Oxygen v20.1 with Eclipse 4.8 (eclipse-platform-4.8-win32-x86_64.zip), now moved to archives:
http://archive.eclipse.org/eclipse/down ... 806110500/

I retested now Oxygen v21.0 with Eclipse 4.10, eclipse-platform-4.10-win32-x86_64.zip:
http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/dow ... 812060815/
and it works as expected.

If problems persist, check for errors in the <eclipse_workspace>\.metadata\.log file.

Regards,
Adrian

[adrian]

Hi,

I just wanted to update this thread with the information that since v21.0 Oxygen supports OpenJDK (OpenJDK 11 in v21.0 and OpenJDK 12 in v21.1).
OpenJDK 11 and later properly implement the support required for Syriac ligatures.

You can now download Oxygen distributions that bundle OpenJDK:

Oxygen XML Editor:
Windows 64-bit (Includes OpenJDK)
macOS 10.11 and later (Includes OpenJDK)
Linux 64-bit (Includes OpenJDK)

Oxygen XML Author:
Windows 64-bit (Includes OpenJDK)
macOS 10.11 and later (Includes OpenJDK)
Linux 64-bit (Includes OpenJDK)

Regards,
Adrian

[bulk_bulk]

Hi Radu.

Here is the moment I was waiting for!
On behalf of the whole community of Syriacists involved all over the world in encoding projects, I wish to thank you and the <oXygen/> team for this implementation, which - in addition to supporting ligatures - will also help us make our work even more fun and productive.

Best,
Claudia