Oxygen XML Forum

Hi,

I'm not sure if this feature exists or not, but I can't find it: in some other editors I've worked with there has been some sort of simple feature for filling in ditaval filtering values. I think it's called profiling tool in Arbortext for instance, and XMetal has a similar one. Basically it's a dialog that pops up where you can add values for the attributes audience, platform, product, and props (the filtering attributes).

Is there such a feature in Oxygen? If not I think it would be a good idea to add it.

Regards,

Anders

Hi Anders

Oxygen 11.2 does not have this feature but Oxygen 12 (which will be released in a couple of weeks) will.
You will be able to define in the Oxygen Preferences allowed values for the profiling conditions and then you will have a custom dialog with checkboxes used to edit profiling conditions in the Author page or in the DITA Maps manager.
You will also be able to define condition sets and see in the Author page and DITA Maps Manager which parts of the content are filtered from the output.
Oxygen 12 beta kits with this feature already included can be found here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/oxygen-user ... 02731.html
If you have feedback on the kits, it is always welcomed.

Regards,
Radu

Ok, great. And version 12 is a free update if you have 11.2?

Regards,

Anders

Hi again,

I have now tried the new profiling functionality, and it seems rather promising, but I'm not sure I get it fully.

The big surprise was that it seems as if you can define new profiling attributes directly in the preferences dialog...? But I tried it, and it didn't quite work out. I defined the attribute "model", and gave it a couple of values. But then when I wanted to use it, there were a couple of problems. First of all, the attribute was not available from the attribute window. Only by right-clicking and choosing it from the context menu. That's fine though, but when I inserted the attribute, the validation complained that it wasn't declared.

So does that mean I have to specialize the attribute myself in the DTD first as usual? I thought the idea was that it was possible to define a new attribute directly from the editor? Although it would be surprising, it that is not the idea then I don't know what is the point of having a mechanism for defining new attributes in the preference dialog?

Please explain...

Regards,

Anders

Hi Anders,

The idea behind the Oxygen Preferences Editor / Pages / Author / Profiling/Conditional Text page is to let Oxygen know about the attribute names that are used for profiling in different frameworks (DITA, Docbook). So the attributes need to be already defined in the schemas, DTDs. The preferences page is only used to choose which ones are used for profiling and to define sets of allowed values for them. These preferences are then used to edit the attributes in a specialized dialog (right click on a DITA Map or in the Author page and choose Edit Profiling Attributes) and to define condition sets for filtering DITA content (and have these filters create the DITAVAL file when transforming DITA Maps to various output formats).

You know how complex DITA DTD specializations can be (and the fact they also necessitate new file templates, catalogs, etc)_and if Oxygen will have in the future support for adding such specializations the GUI will be more complex than just adding attributes in a table.

Regards,
Radu

Absolutely, that's why I was surprised to see it, but it turns out I misunderstood the purpose then.

But that's perfect anyway, I'll just continue doing the specializations myself but at least now I have support for adding values in the editor. Great!

/Anders

A follow-up question for this thread:

When I set some new values for a profiling attribute, say "product", are these set values saved in some sort of configuration file that is portable to another installation of Oxygen?

Same question for "Profiling Condition Sets"...

Regards,

Anders

Hi Anders,

You can save almost all the Preferences pages from Oxygen at Project level. At the bottom of the preferences page you have a switch between global and project options.
The idea when you want to use common Oxygen options with others would be to create an Oxygen project xpr file containing links to the resources you are editing and project level options and have that file committed to a Subversion client for example.
Then each member of the team will update their Oxygen project file and use it when editing in Oxygen.
You can also use the Options->Export Global Options menu entry to export all your Oxygen options to a file and then import them from another user's installation.

Regards,
Radu

Great, thanks!