Oxygen XML Editor 14.0

June 27, 2012

Version 14 marks a major step forward in the XML development support as it introduces additional concepts and functionality that change the way you develop XML and XML-related applications.

The XML authoring competes with word processors on ease of use and functionality while providing all the benefits of having XML documents as the result of your work - it has never been easier before to create, annotate and review XML content.

The support for plugin and framework repositories allows Oxygen users to discover and install extensions to the standard Oxygen functionality and enables the Oxygen plugin and framework developers to easily deliver and update their applications to Oxygen users.

This version introduces subscription-based licenses for 1 year and 6 months alongside the existing permanent licensing option.

XML Development

XSLT Unit Test

Oxygen provides XSLT Unit Test support based on XSpec. You can easily create a test for an XSLT stylesheet using the New -> XSLT Unit Test contextual action in the Project view. This action automatically generates an XSpec stub for the templates and functions from the stylesheet that you want to test. Editing XSpec is assisted with content completion assistance and validation, and a default transformation scenario allows to run the tests, generating as output the test report.

XPath/XQuery Builder

The XPath and XQuery builder is a powerful sandbox tool designed to help you in building, re-using and testing XPath and XQuery code snippets. Using the Content Completion Assistant and syntax highlight coloring, you can quickly build queries and you can re-use them either from the history stack or from the favorites list.

CTRL/CMD + Click Navigation

By holding down CTRL (CMD on Mac) in the Text editing mode some components become links that you can follow to get to the definition of those components. For example, in an XML document, an element name becomes a link to that element definition in the associated schema or DTD. In an XSL stylesheet, a variable reference becomes a link to that variable definition, and so on.

In-Place Rename

Refactoring your code is a lot easier with the rename component action that allows you to rename a component and all its occurrences in the current file without showing any dialog boxes. All the component occurrences are highlighted and changed as-you-type. Oxygen provides a default shortcut to quickly trigger this action: ALT+SHIFT+R (ALT+CMD+R on OS X).

XSLT 3.0

XSLT 3.0 support is automatically activated for each XSLT stylesheet having the version attribute set to 3.0. Oxygen provides content completion assistance for XSLT 3.0 stylesheets, support for transformations and XSLT validation, updated Outline view and search and refactoring actions that handle new additions in the XSLT 3.0 standard.

XQuery 3.0

The XQuery editor and the XQuery builder allow you to edit and execute XQuery 3.0 expressions (including schema-aware ones). The Saxon 9 XQuery processor is used for execution and validation. The functions defined in XQuery 3.0 are presented in the Content Completion Assistant.

XPath 3.0

The XSLT 3.0 and XQuery 3.0 specifications are based on XPath 3.0 so Oxygen updates its XPath support to cover the new additions in XPath 3.0. The XPath builder allows you to edit and execute XPath 3.0 expressions.

Authoring

Display Tracked Changes as Callouts

Along with review comments, the changes can be presented as callout boxes (balloons) next to the editing area, thus making it easy to collaborate on document editing and review. You can control what type of changes are displayed as well as the additional information: changed content, date, time, and author. To enable the balloons for tracked changes, use the 'Callouts' options page.

Complete DITA 1.2 Implementation in Relax NG

The complete set of DITA 1.2 schemas is available in Relax NG and Oxygen provides full support for creating, authoring and publishing DITA documents based on those Relax NG schemas. The DITA support in Relax NG was contributed back to the DITA community as an open source project: DITA-NG.

XPath Filter for Find/Replace in Author Mode

The XPath filter that was previously only available in Text mode, is now available in the Author editing mode.

Preview conref Target Elements

The insertion of a DITA conref is easier because Oxygen shows a preview of the target elements using the visual Author mode.

Partial Support for EPS Images

If the JAI Image I/O Tools libraries are installed in Oxygen, TIFF preview images embedded in referenced EPS images are rendered in the Author mode. Note that this is an experimental support.

CSS 3 Sub-strings Matching Attribute Selectors

The Author editing mode supports the CSS 3 starts-with, ends-with and contains attribute selectors.

Plugins and Frameworks

StratML Framework

Support for Strategy Markup Language Part 1 and Part 2 is default in Oxygen, offering default schema association based on the document namespace, built-in XML Catalog for mapping remote StratML schema references to local copies, easy creation of new StratML documents from document templates, visual editing in the Author mode and default transformation to HTML.

Increased Framework Portability

An additional editor variable ${framework} that is expanded to the current framework folder allows you to reference to resources such as schemas, CSS stylesheets, and so on, in a portable way, that does not depend on the actual framework location.

Localized Frameworks

A framework provides specific support for an XML vocabulary. This is what Oxygen uses to provide default support for DITA, DocBook, TEI, etc. Starting with version 14, the frameworks support internationalization and the main default Oxygen frameworks were localized in English, German, French, Dutch, and Japanese.

Specific Element Icons

Many of the default Oxygen frameworks (DITA, DocBook, TEI, XHTML, XSL and XML Schema) were updated to use the API that allow providing custom icons for elements to provide specific icons (for example, to easily distinguish a title, a paragraph, a list, etc.) These icons appear in the Outline view and in the content completion list when an element is proposed to be inserted in the document.

Transformation and Validation

Unified Presentation of Transformation Scenarios

All transformation scenarios are presented regardless of their storage: the project file, user preferences, or frameworks. You can easily import and export scenarios, and change their storage location.

Associate Multiple Transformation Scenarios

You can publish to multiple output formats with just one click. For instance, if you associate DITA to PDF and DITA to WebHelp scenarios to a DITA map then the "Apply Transformation" action will perform both transformations.

Unified Presentation of Validation Scenarios

All validation scenarios are presented regardless of their storage: the project file, user preferences, or frameworks. You can easily import and export scenarios, and change their storage location.

Associate Multiple Validation Scenarios

You can associate multiple validation scenarios with your documents.

EPUB

EPUB 3.0

The EPUB support was updated to include validation for EPUB 3.0 files. The support for the files included inside an EPUB was also updated to support the new files referenced by the EPUB 3 specification.

Eclipse Plugin

Internationalization Support for the Oxygen Eclipse Plugin

Oxygen is available both as a standalone Java application and as an Eclipse plugin. The internationalization support was available only in the standalone version and now it was extended to also cover the Eclipse plugin. By default, the Eclipse plugin is localized in the following languages: English, German, French, Dutch, and Japanese.

MathML Editing in the Eclipse Plugin

MathML equations are rendered in the OxygenAuthor editing mode. For editing, Oxygen provides a simple MathML visual editor that displays the rendered equation and the MathML source side by side and synchronizes the cursor position in both views to quickly map from the rendered equation to the source and vice-versa.

MarkLogic

XQuery Validation

The XQuery modules can be validated using the MarkLogic server thus you can spot possible issues quickly, without the need to actually execute that XQuery script. The validation support requires MarkLogic 5 or a later version.

Remote Editing

It is possible to edit a module opened directly from the MarkLogic connection, without the need to go through a file or WebDAV peer connection.

Other

Find and Replace in Files Improvements

The Find and Replace in files support was updated to support text on multiple lines. Before applying a replace operation, you can also preview the changes that are about to be performed and you can also limit the scope of those changes to specific files.

Search Results Highlighted in Editors

The results of the XPath, Find, Search References/Declarations operations are highlighted in the editor and marked in the side bar, in both Author and Text mode.

Show/Hide Element Names in Outline View

You are able to control the visibility of the element names in the Outline view. Hiding element names allows you to focus more on the document content.

Improved JavaScript/JSON Support

The JavaScript editing experience has been improved with the addition of the Content Completion Assistant, synchronized Outline view and syntax validation. The Outline view can also be used when editing JSON files.

Browse Database Resources

In most places where a resource is needed, Oxygen uses a component that allows to easily identify what resource to open. This component includes an action that allows browsing database collections to find the resource to open thus making the resources stored in databases easily accessible in many workflows.

Extended API

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

Control the Callouts Rendering and Actions in Author Mode

The ro.sync.ecss.extensions.api.callouts.AuthorCalloutsController gives you the possibility to specify if the Track Changes insert and delete highlights and the review comment highlights should be rendered as callouts on a side bar in the Author mode.

The controller can be used also to decide the content and styling of the callouts corresponding to the custom persistent highlights. By using the AuthorPersistentHighlighter.setHighlightsActionsProvider(AuthorPersistentHighlightActionsProvider) method you can also provide the actions which are displayed in the pop-up menu of these callouts.

Handle Special Author Table Operations

You can provide an extension of the ro.sync.ecss.extensions.api.table.operations.AuthorTableOperationsHandler class in the ExtensionBundle implementation to handle insert and delete operations which are called when the user performs actions such as delete, paste, drop, or move on table columns and rows.

Access to Author Selection Model

This version adds support for multiple selections in the Author mode. The ro.sync.ecss.extensions.api.AuthorSelectionModel API provides access to all Author selection intervals and contains methods for adding simple and multiple selections.

Listener for Author Track Changes and Review Comments Actions

The ro.sync.ecss.extensions.api.highlights.AuthorPersistentHighlightsListener can be set to receive notifications about persistent highlights triggered by add, remove, or update actions.

Frameworks Internationalization Support

In order to provide a framework which can be used without modifications with multiple user languages, all action names and messages from the document types can be translated. The AuthorAccess.getAuthorResourceBundle() method was added to provide a message bundle that holds all the internationalized messages for a framework.

DITA Map Tree Component Integration

Using the Author Component API, a DITA Map Tree Component can be integrated in your applet or Java application. The component displays a DITA Map in a tree-like fashion similar to the DITA Maps Manager view of the Oxygen XML standalone distribution. The DITA Map Tree Component provider can be obtained from the AuthorComponentFactory.createDITAMapTreeComponentProvider() method.

Provide DITA Key Definitions

The ro.sync.exml.workspace.api.editor.page.ditamap.keys.KeyDefinitionManager can be used to provide information about key definitions which are used as a context for solving conkeyref and keyref references in all opened DITA topics.

In the standalone distribution extensions, the manager can be set by using the PluginWorkspace.setDITAKeyDefinitionManager(KeyDefinitionManager). If you are developing a plugin for Oxygen plugin for Eclipse you can create a plugin extension, having the com.oxygenxml.editor.ditaKeyDefinitionManager extension point.

Licensing MathFlow Editor and MathFlow Composer

It is possible to set a fixed key for licensing the MathFlow Editor (used for editing embedded MathML equations) and the MathFlow Composer (used for viewing embedded MathML equations). The licensing methods (setMathFlowFixedLicenseKeyForEditor(String) and setMathFlowFixedLicenseKeyForComposer(String)) can be found in both AuthorComponentFactory and StandalonePluginWorkspace.

Plugin Workspace Provider

The ro.sync.exml.workspace.api.PluginWorkspaceProvider singleton provides access to the workspace API of the Oxygen editor for plugins developed for both standalone and Eclipse distributions. By using it you can add listeners to editor-related events (for example, editor opened, closed, page changed, etc.), obtain access to all opened editors, add option listeners, or save custom options.

Execute XPath Expressions Against the Content of the Text Mode

The execution of XPath expressions against the content of the Text mode can be done by using the evaluateXPath(String) and findElementsByXPath(String) methods, added in ro.sync.exml.workspace.api.editor.page.text.xml.WSXMLTextEditorPage class. An instance of WSXMLTextEditorPage is returned by the ro.sync.exml.workspace.api.editor.WSEditor.getCurrentPage(), when the current page is the Text mode of an XML document editor.

Map between Text Mode Offsets and Their Line-Column Coordinate

Additional methods were added in ro.sync.exml.workspace.api.editor.page.text.WSTextEditorPage to provide the line and column coordinates of a specific offset (getLineOfOffset(int) and getColumnOfOffset(int)) or to get the offset corresponding to a line start or a line end position (getOffsetOfLineStart(int) and getOffsetOfLineEnd(int)).

Set a Default Location for a File Chooser

The ro.sync.exml.workspace.api.Workspace.chooseFile method allows you to set the default location of a file chooser used for selecting a file.

Updated Components

Saxon Enterprise Edition

The Saxon 9 Enterprise Edition processor from Saxonica for XSLT, XQuery and XML Schema was updated to version 9.4.0.3.

EpubCheck

The EpubCheck was updated to version 3.0b5 to provide validation support for both EPUB 2 and EPUB 3 documents.

Calabash

The Calabash XProc processor was updated to version 1.0.3-94.

Updated DocBook Stylesheets

The DocBook stylesheets were updated to version 1.77.1.

Updated TEI Schemas and Stylesheets

The TEI schemas and stylesheets were updated to version 2.10 of the schemas and version 6.13 of the TEI stylesheets.

XML Editor