What's New in Oxygen XML Editor 26.1

March 25, 2024

Oxygen XML Editor version 26.1 is an incremental release of the industry-leading bundle of tools for content authors, developers, collaborators, and publishers. Starting with this release, the Enterprise edition of Oxygen XML Editor/Author/Developer becomes AI-ready, offering access without the need for an additional subscription to the Oxygen AI Positron Assistant Enterprise add-on which allows direct connection to OpenAI accounts or to the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.

Other highlights for this release include various time-saving productivity enhancements for DITA authors, including the ability to convert sections to new topic files and several actions listed as proposals in the content completion window make it easy to insert content references and key references. DITA publishers that use the Zendesk Help Center transformation scenario benefit from it automatically creating a table of contents and it now supports publishing to a subsection. For CSS-based PDF transformations, the new support for prepress processing ensures that your PDFs are print-ready. Additional editing highlights include improvements to the spell checker, the Split action in the Author mode's content completion now automatically adds required first child elements inside the newly created element, and the Smart Paste mechanism converts Markdown content that is pasted within XML documents in Author mode into the appropriate target vocabulary.

The AI Positron Assistant now has a separate Enterprise version available for users who want to connect to OpenAI accounts or Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. New document templates are also available to help you easily create AI Positron custom actions, a new AI action is also available to translate content into any desired language, and the AI Positron Refactoring action now even works when applied on remote resources.

JSON users now have the power to transform JSON documents using XSLT transformation scenarios, the content completion for JSON now offers proposals even when no schema is associated, the JSON Outline view now displays the number of child elements in each array's label and also supports drag and drop. Furthermore, basic text editing support was added for JSON5 documents, and a new JSON Schema Validator add-on is available that provides support for validating JSON documents against JSON schema version 2020-12.

You also now have the ability to execute Quick fix proposals in bulk, the latest engines are available for the Saxon XSLT and XQuery Transformer add-on, XProc 3.0 schemas were added to offer support for content completion and validation for XProc 3.0 files, unique values are now automatically generated for ID-type attributes that are inserted using the Content Completion Assistant, and schema files and new file templates were added to support editing DocBook 5.2 documents and SVG 1.2 Tiny documents.

This release also implements a variety of performance improvements, security enhancements, API and component updates, and various bug fixes.

DITA Authoring

Insert Content/Key References from Content Completion Assistant

When editing DITA topics, you now have access to several actions listed as proposals in the content completion window that make it easier to insert content references and key references. The conref action opens a pop-up window that allows you to choose reusable content from a list of all the reusable components (elements with IDs in topics that are referenced as resource-only in the context DITA map). The keyref action opens a pop-up window that allows you to choose a key from a list of all the keys that are gathered from the context DITA map.

Preserve Topic Type When Converting Sections to New Topics

When using the Convert sections to new topics XML refactoring operation, users will benefit from the topic type being preserved for the new topic files created from the inner sections. This applies specifically to DITA topics of the type topic, concept, or reference. Previously, the generic topic type was used, but now users can ensure consistency in the topic types throughout the conversion process.

Option to Control Conversions of Non-DITA Resources When Inserting Topic References

A new option (Dynamic conversion of specific non-DITA resources) is available in the DITA Maps preferences page that controls whether or not non-DITA resources are automatically converted to DITA when inserting topic references in the DITA Maps Manager. The option is enabled by default, which means non-DITA resources (such as Word, Excel, Markdown, OpenAPI, and HTML) are dynamically converted when chosen in the Insert Topic Reference dialog box. You can disable the option if you do not want such resources to be converted to DITA.

DITA Publishing

Automatic Fix of Width/Height Values for Images

When performing CSS-based PDF transformations, it is important to ensure that the values for the width or height of an image do not contain uppercase letters for units of measurement (this can cause the image to be missing in the output). If the system detects that an image has width or height values that contain units of measurement written in uppercase letters, it now automatically corrects them to ensure that the image is properly displayed in the output. Additionally, a warning message is displayed to alert you about the issue so that you can also fix the problem in the source file.

Zendesk Transformation Automatically Creates Table of Contents

The Zendesk Help Center transformation scenario now automatically creates and publishes a table of contents as the first article in the target section. This initial article serves as a hierarchical reference to all other articles. The title of the table of contents article is the title of the DITA map. To disable the publication of a table of contents, you can set a new parameter called zendesk.create.toc to false. Additionally, there are two new optional parameters, zendesk.toc.title.prefix and zendesk.toc.title.suffix, which allow you to specify a prefix or suffix to be added to the title of the table of contents article.

Publish to Zendesk Subsection

The Zendesk Help Center transformation scenario now supports publishing to a subsection. The Section parameter can contain a path of section names separated by '///'. For example:

Main section///Subsection
            1///Subsection 1.1

Real-Time Publishing Steps Presented for DITA Transformations

When running DITA transformations, the real-time progress is constantly updated in the status bar to present the current publishing step being processed.

Support for Prepress Print Layout With New Cropping Properties

For CSS-based PDF transformations, support was implemented for prepress processing with the addition of the new cropping properties (-oxy-scale, -oxy-crop-box, and -oxy-crop-offset). It is also possible to add the crop and/or registration marks to the PDF document by using the marks property.

Author Mode

Spell Checker Improvements

When using the spell checker for DITA, DocBook, or TEI documents opened in Author mode, the borders of consecutive inline elements are now considered transparent. This means that if there is no space between two consecutive inline elements and the text inside them would form a misspelled word when placed consecutively (without a space) in the output, a spell check error will be reported.

Smart Paste Markdown Content

Markdown content that is pasted within DITA, DocBook, TEI, or XHTML documents in the Author visual editing mode is converted to the target vocabulary, similar to pasting web page content or MS Word content.

Split Action in Content Completion Automatically Inserts Required Child Element

When using the Split action within the content completion feature in Author mode, if the initial element has a required first child element, it will automatically be added as an empty child element inside the newly created element.

Text Mode

Batch Execute Quick Fix Proposals

A new Apply all default quick fix proposals action was added in the Text editing mode's contextual menu that can be used to batch execute all detected default quick fix proposals for all reported validation errors.

Toggle Comments Action Supports Multiple Languages

The Toggle Comments action that is used to enclose the currently selected fragment in a comment is now context dependent, making it possible to comment multiple types of languages within a document. For example, you can comment XML, CSS, JavaScript, or XPath fragments inside an XSLT document.

Automatically Generate Unique Values for ID-Type Attributes

When an ID-type attribute is inserted using the Content Completion Assistant, a unique value is now automatically generated for it, eliminating the need for an extra step of adding an unique value for the attribute.

JSON

Transform JSON Documents with XSLT

An enhanced feature was added that enables you to transform JSON documents using XSLT processing. This involves the implementation of transformation scenarios, which can be created and linked to JSON documents. This facilitates the smooth processing of JSON documents, streamlining the overall workflow. See Transforming JSON Documents with XSLT for more details.

Transform Multiple JSON Documents at Once

It is now possible to transform multiple JSON documents at once with XSLT processing. To achieve this, select multiple JSON documents in the Project view, and from the contextual menu, you can choose to apply or configure an XSLT transformation scenario.

Edit JSON5 Documents

Text editing support was added for JSON5 documents (a superset of JSON that aims to alleviate some of the limitations of JSON by expanding its syntax to include some productions from ECMAScript 5.1). The Outline view also includes syntax highlights for JSON5 documents. Validation support is also available. See Editing JSON5 Documents for more details.

Content Completion Offers Proposals Even When no Schema is Associated

When editing a JSON document that does not have an associated schema, Oxygen automatically learns the document structure as you edit and the content completion assistant will propose inferred JSON structures accordingly.

Better Array Rendering in JSON Outline View

The JSON Outline view now displays the number of child elements in each array's label and each child is prefixed with the index in the array. This makes it easier to identify and work with the arrays using the Outline view.

Enhanced Drag and Drop Functionality in JSON Outline View

Significant improvements were made to the drag and drop support in the JSON Outline view. Now, you can easily drop a property within an object or array as a sibling or a child. This feature ensures a more seamless and efficient editing experience.

XSLT / XQuery / XPath / XProc

Updated Engines Available for the Saxon XSLT and XQuery Transformer Add-on

New versions for the Saxon XSLT and XQuery transformer add-on are now available to install. They integrate the latest available engine versions for Saxon 10 (10.9), 11 (11.6), and 12 (12.4).

Latest Engines Available for the Saxon XSLT and XQuery Transformer Add-on

Default XSLT Stylesheet version set to 3.0

XSLT 3.0 is now used as the default version for the various components within the application. New document templates, sample files, and various options within preferences pages now have XSLT 3.0 set as the default rather than 2.0.

XProc Version 3.0 Schemas

XProc 3.0 schemas were added to offer support for content completion and validation for XProc 3.0 files. The validation support for version 3.0 is only available using the default validation engine (if a custom engine is used, version 3.0 support depends on whether it is available for that particular custom engine).

File Comparison

Merge Documents with Change Tracking Highlights Tool Improved

Improvements were made to the Merge Documents with Change Tracking Highlights tool to provide better handling of particular cases where documents with extensive structural changes are compared (one such example would be the case in which elements are renamed to ensure that the new structure is generated correctly and all the attributes are copied). This should help eliminate false validation errors when comparing pairs with lots of structural changes.

API for Merge Documents or Directories with Change Tracking Highlights

The newly added AuthorDiffChangeTrackingMergerFactory.AuthorDiffChangeTrackingMergerFactory() API can be used for merging a pair of compared XML documents or directories and the resulting merged document will contain highlighted tracked changes. The class provides 2 methods: createChangeTrackingMergePerformer() for merging documents, and createDirectoryChangeTrackingMergePerformer() for merging directories.

Markdown

Syntax Highlights for Languages Embedded in Markdown

For Markdown documents that contain code from various languages, those blocks are now rendered with proper syntax highlights to make it easier to distinguish the non-Markdown syntax. The languages that are rendered with syntax highlights in Markdown documents include JavaScript, JSON, YAML, XML, Java, Python, and CSS.

DITA Preview Presents Colors and Filters for Profiling Attributes

For Markdown documents that contain profiling attributes within curly braces (e.g. ## Header 2 {audience=expert}), the DITA preview pane now presents the profiling attributes, colors, and filtered elements similar to how they are presented in Author mode, provided that the profiling is set to be shown in the Profiling/Conditional Text drop-down menu in the DITA Maps Manager.

Oxygen AI Positron Assistant

Oxygen AI Positron Assistant Enterprise

A separate Enterprise version of the Oxygen AI Positron Assistant add-on is now available allowing users to directly connect to their AI models, either by using their OpenAI accounts or on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. This enables them to have full control over the AI service that is used by the Oxygen AI Positron Assistant and to leverage personalized or company-specific AI models. Users can configure their company-specific AI service details in the new AI Service Configuration preferences page (Options->Preferences->Oxygen AI Positron Assistant->AI Service Configuration).

Oxygen AI Positron Assistant Enterprise operates with a subscription license. Additionally, it can now be used without a separate subscription on the newly introduced Enterprise (AI-ready) edition for Oxygen XML Editor/Author/Developer.

Easily Create Custom AI Actions

New document templates are available to help you easily create AI Positron custom actions. The AI Positron Custom Action file template contains a single custom action definition in JSON format and can be used to configure a single action, while the AI Positron Custom Actions List file template provides a convenient way of defining multiple actions inside the same file. While working on such an action, you will also benefit from the help given by the content completion assistant.

Translate Content to Any Language

A new action (named "Other") was added inside the Translation section and can be used to translate content into any desired language. You are able to choose from a predefined set of languages or type your own target language.

AI Refactoring Available for Remote Resources

The AI Positron Assistant add-on contributes an AI Positron Refactoring action in the contextual menu (Refactoring->AI Positron Refactoring) of both the Project and DITA Maps Manager views that can be used to refactor multiple files at once. Now, this feature also works when applied on remote resources (for example, resources placed on WebDav servers or Content Management Systems).

Easier Access to Actions

The available AI actions are now displayed as buttons in the Oxygen AI Positron Assistant view when the chat is empty (in addition to being displayed in the Actions drop-down menu), thus providing easier access to start a new AI action.

XML Syntax Coloring In Chat Response Area

The chat pane now uses XML syntax highlighting for XML code to make it easier to see and understand the XML structure.

Add-ons

Oxygen offers a range of add-ons that can be utilized to expand its functionality. Version 26.1 introduces the JSON Schema Validator add-on and brings new improvements for the Batch Documents Converter add-on.

JSON Schema Validator

A new JSON Schema Validator add-on is available to provide support for validating JSON documents against JSON schema version 2020-12. The validation engine is based on the json-sKema library. Once the add-on is installed, you can choose the JSON Schema Validator (json-sKema) engine when creating a validation scenario. For more details, see JSON Schema Validator add-on.

Batch Documents Converter Improvements

Several enhancements were made to the Batch Documents Converter add-on, including the addition of an XSD to JSON Schema conversion that results in a version 2020-12 JSON Schema.

Scripting

The All Platforms distribution of Oxygen is bundled with a scripts sub-folder that contains scripts for automating and running various utilities from a command line interface. To run any of these scripts, you need to purchase a scripting license.

Performance Improved for Validation and Check for Completeness Script

The DITA Validate and Check for Completeness script received important performance enhancements. By eliminating a lot of duplication within the processing, the time it takes for the script to finish when using DITAVAL filters has been reduced significantly.

Miscellaneous

Experimental Dark Color Theme in Eclipse

A new experimental system property (-Dcom.oxygenxml.eclipse.dark.color.theme=true) can be set in the eclipse.ini configuration file to enforce a dark color theme when opening XML documents in Oxygen's Eclipse plugin. The regular color theme in Eclipse must also be set to Dark (in the Preferences->General->Appearance page) to consistently apply the Dark theme in the entire workbench.

Create and Validate SVG 1.2 Tiny Documents

SVG 1.2 Tiny schema grammar files were added and a new file template to create new SVG 1.2 Tiny documents is available in the new file wizard. These updates make it possible to easily create, edit, and validate SVG Tiny 1.2 documents.

DocBook 5.2

Schemas and new file templates were added to support creating, validating, and editing DocBook 5.2 documents.

Component Updates

Eclipse 4.31

Updated the Eclipse plugin to support version 2024-03 (4.31).

XSpec Helper View Add-on Now Bundles XSpec 2.3.2

The XSpec Helper View add-on was updated to include XSpec version 2.3.2.

TEI XML Schemas 4.7.0 and XSLT 7.56.0

The TEI XML vocabulary schemas were updated to version 4.7.0 and the XSLT stylesheets were updated to version 7.56.0.

OpenJDK 17.0.10

The version of OpenJDK that is bundled with the installation kits for providing the Java Runtime Environment was updated to version 17.0.10 from Eclipse Adoptium.

JSON-Java Package 20240205

Updated the JSON-Java (org.json) package to version 20240205.

Apache Lucene 9.7.0

Updated the Apache Lucene libraries used for indexing content for the Open/Find Resource functionality to version 9.7.0.

Apache POI 5.2.5

Updated the Apache POI libraries used for various conversions from MS Excel to version 5.2.5.

Apache Commons IO 2.15.0

Updated the Apache Commons IO utilities library to version 2.15.0.

Zendesk Access 0.24.1

Updated the zendesk-java-client library used for publishing DITA XML content to Zendesk to version 0.24.1.

Logback Classic 1.4.14

Updated the logback-classic library to version 1.4.14.

Logback Core 1.4.14

Updated the logback-core library to version 1.4.14.

Deprecated/Removed Components

EAD, KML, StratML Frameworks Moved to Oxygen XML GitHub Organization

The frameworks for editing EAD, KML, and StratML documents are now available as separate projects in the Oxygen XML GitHub organization.

Deprecated Support for Tree Editor

The support for the Tree Editor (Tools->Tree Editor) has been officially deprecated and will be removed in a future major release.

Deprecated Support for WSDL

The support for editing WSDL files and for the WSDL SOAP Analyser has been officially deprecated and will be removed in a future major release.

Deprecated Support for FTP/SFTP

The support for using FTP and SFTP connections has been officially deprecated and will be removed in a future major release.

Deprecated Support for Databases

The support for connecting to Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, IBM DB2, and Marklogic databases has been officially deprecated and will be removed in a future major release.

Deprecated Support for Xalan and XSLTProc

The support for using the Xalan and XSLTProc XSLT processors has been officially deprecated and will be removed in a future major release.

Support Removed for XSV and SQC Custom Validation Engines

The support for using the XSV (XML Schema Validator) and SQC (Schema Quality Checker from IBM) custom validation engines has been removed.

API

Create an Editor Component for a Certain Content Type

The StandalonePluginWorkspace.createEditorComponentProvider API now allows you to create an editing component that can be used in custom side views by passing an extra content type parameter. This means you can create editing components to edit HTML5 or JSON content.

Create a Text Area with Syntax Highlights

The new

OxygenUIComponentsFactory.createTextArea(String contentType, boolean
              highlightCurrentLine)

API method allows you to create a text area with syntax highlights for a certain content type and it also controls whether or not the current line should be highlighted. One example of a use case is that it enabled undo/redo events to be selected when editing a chat message in the AI Positron Assistant.

Access Batch Operations Listener for 3rd-Party Plugins

The newly added PluginWorkspace.getBatchOperationsListenersAccess() API method can be used by third-party plugins to notify other plugins when a batch operation that modifies multiple resources is in progress.

Reload Content of a Document

The WSEditor.reload() API method now allows for the content of an opened document to be reloaded from the original URL location (whether it is a local or remote location).

Reload Content of a Document if Change is Detected on Local Disk

The new WSEditor.reloadIfChangeOnDiskDetected() API method can be used to reload the content of an opened document from the local disk if the content on disk has changed in the meantime.