Installing DITA schemas into <oXygen/> editor

[hfinger]

I am interested in learning DITA in detail by using the non-WYSIWYG <oXygen/> editor to work through the book Linton, Jennifer, and Kylene Bruski, "Introduction to DITA: A user guide to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture", ComTech, 2006.

Trouble is, as a complete novice, I have no idea how to add/install the DITA DTDs/schemas to <oXygen/> to enable interactive validation. A Google search was fruitless. You would be amazed how many web pages have the words "install" [or variations thereof], "oXygen" and "DITA" on them but don't actually tell you how to do it!

So if someone has done this or can point me to a web page with the information I need, I would be very grateful -- and probably not the only one on this list! Just remember, I am a novice so that the more detailed and specific the instructions, and the less general, the better.

Regards,
Hedley

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

In the current version of oXygen, that is version 8.2 a DITA document is edited as any other XML document based on a DTD or schema associated to the edited document. Just unzip the archive with the DITA DTDs / schemas on your computer, create a new XML document in oXygen or open an existing one, after that associate the DITA DTD / schema that you need (for example topic.dtd / topic.xsd or map.dtd / map.xsd) to the document using the Associate Schema action available on the Document toolbar and also on the Document -> XML Document menu. Now you can benefit of the oXygen's content completion assistant and you can validate the document against the DTD / schema associated in the previous step.

The next version of oXygen will come with predefined support for editing DITA documents visually (without seeing and editing the XML tags directly).


Regards,
Sorin

[hfinger]

Sorin:

Thanks for your advice re associating the DTDs. I would also like to open skeleton templates of standard DITA DOCTYPEs with the File > New menu option, that is, with root elements of <dita>, <topic>, <concept>, <task>, and <reference>.

How do I add skeleton templates of these DOCTYPEs to <oXygen/> so that they appear in the list that is displayed when you choose File > New?

Regards,
Hedley

[sorin_ristache]

You can add a template to the list of document templates displayed in the dialog Templates invoked by the action File -> New from Templates. To add the current document as a template to the list use the action File -> Add to Templates also available on the File toolbar.


Regards,
Sorin