DITA Support Added?

[DITAMan]

Hi All,

So how things are going on with DITA support? I've downloaded the trial version but don't see DITA yet. Am I looking at the wrong place or aren't we are there yet?

Thanks!

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

The next version of oXygen will provide DITA support. The DITA schemas and stylesheets will be included. Editing DITA XML documents in oXygen will be easy but we cannot give all the details before the release.


Regards,
Sorin

[gershon]

Hello,

I've been testing the beta and now the release v9. Excellent work as always!

The DITA support still needs some work. So far these are the items I've noticed:

1) There is no template for bookmap (new in DITA 1.1; I'm so pleased you are using the 1.1 DTDs, none of my other XML editors support 1.1 yet...)

2) Auto-insertion of some elements still needs some work in the new Author view. One example is <step>, which should auto-insert <cmd> (in a DITA task topic).

3) Working with reltables in the Author view is almost impossible. The table is rendered, but it's difficult to place topicref elements correctly. I failed to use the mouse to copy a topicref from the map into a relcell. It was inserted at the wrong location. I fixed it easily in Text view, but most users who would need to use Author view are not likely to want to edit maps in Text view. I currently edit maps in Text view, since Author view is not useful for maps yet.

4) The stylesheet for the authoring view could do with some work. I'll try to find the time to research what you've done and add things I feel are essential for editing DITA topics.

5) Need a GUI way to insert topicref and topichead elements into the map without typing the full @href value.

6) Need a GUI way to do conrefs. Currently you have to hard-code the @conref value, again not something we can expect non-technical people to do correctly most of the time.

I think these are all the issues I have at this time. Please contact me directly if you need further information or direction on these requests.

Thanks for the great product. Now that Oxygen has a serious editor for XML documents, I expect it will replace my previous XML editor that is up for maintenance renewal. Good to be able to use Oxygen for all my XML needs and not just XSL development! Well done!

Gershon

[gershon]

Also, when saving a DITA map or bookmap, the default file extension should be .ditamap, not .xml.

[Radu]

Dear Gershon,

Thank you for your valuable suggestions, I added enhancement requests for all of them.

For number 2) we need more details (a small sample file) to reproduce the auto completion behavior. We tested both in Text mode and in Author and the auto completion also inserts a <cmd> in a <step>.
Please make sure that in the Oxygen Preferences-> Editor -> Content Completion page the "Add element content" checkbox is checked.

For number 4): We are always opened to improvements. Please feel free to contact us at support at oxygenxml dot com with your enhancements.

For numbers 5 and 6: They will probably be addressed in a special Oxygen DITA edition.

Regards,
Radu

[Radu]

One more thing.

You can add your own DITA template files in the Oxygen installation directory/frameworks/dita/templates/ and they will automatically be visible in the "New file" dialog.
You can also search for "Configuring New File Templates" in the Oxygen Help dialog for more advanced templates management and explanations.

Radu