Oxygen XML Author 16.0

May 20, 2014

Working with conditional content is a lot easier with Oxygen XML Author 16 as you can set different colors and styles for each condition or focus exclusively on a specific deliverable by hiding all content that is excluded from that deliverable. Table properties can be easily modified for all the table models used in DITA and DocBook.

You can customize the style of the Oxygen WebHelp output that can be obtained from DITA and DocBook to look exactly as you want using the WebHelp skin builder.

Querying a set of files with XPath is facilitated by the XPath execution scope setting that can point to a predefined or a user-defined set of files.

As usual, this version includes many component updates and updated API functionality.

XPath

XPath over Multiple Files

You can easily execute XPath expressions over multiple files. You can choose one of the predefined scopes (Current File, Project, Selected Project Resources, All Opened Files, Current DITA Map Hierarchy) or define your own collection of files.
XPath Over Multiple Files

XPath File Filter

You can execute XPath expressions over all the files from the selected scope or you can define an additional filter that will select the relevant resources from that scope. The default filter selects all the known XML file types.

Stop XPath Execution

An XPath expression executed over multiple documents may take a long period of time to complete. During the execution of an XPath expression, the XPath toolbar displays a Stop button that allows you to stop the processing.

Visual XML Editing

Profiling Colors and Styles

Profiling, also known as conditional processing, allows tagging content that will be available only in specific deliverables. This is usually implemented using specific attributes (also called profiling attributes such as product, audience, etc.) and setting values to them. Oxygen helps you quickly identify the profiled sections of a document by allowing you to define colors and styles for each profiling attribute value and to apply them automatically to the profiled parts of the document.

Support for Editing Table Properties (for DITA & DocBook)

Properties for cells, rows, columns or the entire table can be customized using the contextual Table Properties action. This allows setting vertical and horizontal alignment, column and row separators, conversions between header, body and footer row types or configuring the table frame property.

Hide Content Excluded in a Specific Deliverable

A deliverable is defined by a Profiling Condition Set that specifies what conditional content will be included or excluded from the document. After selecting the current Profiling Condition Set you can choose to hide the excluded content and focus on that deliverable without any interference with the content that is not relevant in that context.

Customizable Profiling Attributes Rendering

The profiling attributes and their values can be made visible and editable directly in the Author visual editing mode. The colors used to render profiling attributes and their values are customizable, you can change the default rendering by setting custom background, border and foreground colors. You can also hide the name of the profiling attribute.
Customizable Profiling Attributes Rendering

Render the text-decoration-style CSS 3 Property

The text-decoration-style property as specified in the CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3 will be rendered by Oxygen in the visual Author editing mode. This allows you to control the style of a text decoration (for example, to show a wavy underline).

WebHelp Skin Builder

DITA Support

DITA OT 1.8.4

The DITA Open Toolkit was updated to version 1.8.4.

Support for Editing DITA Table Properties

Properties for cells, rows, columns or the entire table can be customized using the contextual Table Properties action. This allows setting vertical and horizontal alignment, column and row separators, conversions between header, body and footer row types or configuring the table frame property. CALS, Simple Table and Choice Table formats are supported.
Support for Editing DITA Table Properties

DITAVAL Content Completion Assistant

When editing a DITAVAL file, the Content Completion Assistant displays the profiling attribute names and possible values.

Profiling-Aware DITA Key Resolution

When you work with conditional content you can focus on a specific deliverable by enabling a profiling condition set. Some keys may be conditionally defined and Oxygen will take into account the profiling condition set that filters out some of the content when gathering the key definitions.

DocBook Support

Support for Editing DocBook Table Properties

Properties for cells, rows, columns or the entire table can be customized using the contextual Table Properties action. This allows setting vertical and horizontal alignment, column and row separators, conversions between header, body and footer row types or configuring the table frame property. Both CALS and HTML table models are supported.
Support for Editing DocBook Table Properties

Component Updates

Other

Extend Framework

You can extend a base document type configuration to add or remove functionality. When the base is modified and evolves (from one application version to another, for example) the extension will evolve along with it. This allows the extension to use the new features/actions added in the base.

Eclipse Author Validation Stripe

The Eclipse Plugin was enhanced to contain a vertical validation stripe in the Author visual editing mode showing an overview of all reported validation errors.

Editor Variable for Evaluating XPath 3.0 Expressions

The xpath_eval(expression) editor variable allows you to evaluate XPath 3.0 expressions either statically, in non-XML contexts, or dynamically, relative to the current element, in XML contexts. As an example, this gives you access to all standard XPath functions such as replace(), substring(), or upper-case() when you compute the output file name of a transformation.

Better Application Tooltips Styling

The user interface has been improved by using rich HTML for displaying tooltip information. For example, in the case of a validation error the tooltip may contain a link to an external web page.

Reference Video Files in EPUB and EPUB 3 Output

You can reference popular image or video media files to be included in EPUB and EPUB 3

Oxygen API

A detailed list of all changes to the Java API can be found here.

Maven Repository for the Oxygen SDK

Oxygen provides API to extend its functionality and also makes available components that can be used as part of other applications - all these form the Oxygen SDK. Starting with version 16 the SDK is available through Maven.

Early Access to Oxygen XML Author WebApp

The Oxygen XML Author WebApp provides XML authoring and review in the browser, running Oxygen XML Author on the server in a Java EE container and generating HTML5+JavaScript for the client side. These technology choices make the XML authoring and review available on any device that supports HTML5 and JavaScript, so it works also on smart phones and tablets. The Oxygen SDK includes early access to this web/mobile XML-editing platform.

Import Global Options from an XML Document

The API PluginWorkspace.importGlobalOptions(File) allows you to set fixed options to the application from an exported XML options file.

Access to Plugin Workspace from the Author Component

The API AuthorComponentFactory.getPluginWorkspace() allows access to the Plugins Workspace API from the Author Component API.

Obtain the Balanced Selection

The API WSAuthorEditorPageBase.getBalancedSelection(int, int) allows you to obtain the balanced selection from the Author editing mode.

Obtain the Element Fully Surrounded in the Selection

Use the API WSAuthorEditorPageBase.getFullySelectedNode(int, int) to get the node which is fully surrounded by the current selection.

API to License MathFlow

The API methods MathFlowConfigurator.setMathFlowFixedLicenseFile(File) and MathFlowConfigurator.setMathFlowInstallationFolder(File) methods that allow to license and install the commercial MathFlow editor.

Get the Document Type of the Currently Open XML Editor

The WSEditorBase.getDocumentTypeInformation() API method allows you to find details about the document type of the currently open XML editor.

Set Multiple Attributes to an Element

The API method AuthorDocumentController.setMultipleAttributes() method allows you to faster set multiple attributes to multiple elements.

Get the Build ID of the Current Version

The API method WorkspaceUtilities.getVersionBuildID() can be used to obtain the build ID of the current version of the application.

Execute an Author Action at a Given Offset

The AuthorActionsProvider.invokeAuthorExtensionActionInContext() method allows you to execute an Author Extension Action at a given cursor offset.

Obtain All Registered Editor Listeners

The WSEditor.getEditorListeners() API method allows you to get the list of all listeners registered on a particular editor.

Obtain All Registered Editor Change Listeners

The PluginWorkspace.getEditorChangeListeners() method allows you to get the list of all editor change listeners registered in the application.

Define Scopes for a Plugin's Library

In the plugin.xml plugin configuration file you can contribute a referenced library to the main application class loader by setting the scope attribute to one of the following values: global and globalHighPriority.