Oxygen XML Forum

Hi,

I've recognize a nice change between 11.2 and 12.1:

In the dialog File > New are different icons for each document type. Is it possible to use these icons in the Windows Explorer like Adobe does (there are eg. for .indd files different icons depending on file version)? It would be great if I can differ docbook, dita, tei and own dtds/schemas on the file icon.

Thanks,
Patrick

Hello,

Unfortunately Windows Explorer only allows file associations per file extension. Considering that all of these document types have the XML file extension I really don't see how you could differentiate them by icon in Windows Explorer with the help of an association.

This can be resolved with a windows shell extension(I'm guessing that's what Adobe does) which processes the file just enough to determine its type and from that the icon to be used. The problem with this is that it requires a special native library(a DLL) for Windows to be implemented. Oxygen is a Java application(cross-platform, no native executable code) so a lot of rewriting would be necessary for us to implement the handling of XML and the detection of the document type.

I'll add a feature request to our issue tracking tool and we'll see if we can do something about this.

I forgot to mention that the files with different extensions(.dtd, .xsd, .dita) are already displayed in Windows Explorer with the icon seen in Oxygen(in File -> New). For this to work they have to be associated with Oxygen during the installation.

Regards,
Adrian