XMetaL Author Enterprise 17.0 Release Notes

Contents

Introduction

XMetaL Author is the leading authoring application for organizations using any XML document type, including the most complete support for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, or DITA. XMetaL Author also helps you maximize content reuse through tight integration with content repositories, and address advanced publishing requirements with an extensible publishing framework.

With this version, XMetaL Author introduces an upgraded XMetaL Development Environment, improved editor performance and High-DPI monitors support, new XMetaL APIs for running scripts asynchronously and managing document highlighted text, integration with Microsoft Edge, bookmarks and comments support, DITA 2.0 standard preview, publishing DITA-OT 3.7.2 support, and improved support for DITA-OT publishing log file analysis. For a complete list of new features, see New features.

New features

XMetaL Editor and Development Environment

XMetaL Author Enterprise 17.0:
  • Development, build environments and SDKs are upgraded to the most recent versions.

  • It passed formal QA tests on the Windows 11 platform.

  • Significant performance improvements for file opening and documents editing operations

    For large test documents (over 4 Gb size, containing over 50.000 elements and over 1000 inline images) opening documents time decreased several times.

  • High-DPI monitors support

    XMetaL now takes the DPI of displays into account and is able to natively render their contents on High-DPI monitors.

  • New APIs for:
    • running specific XMetaL scripts in synchronous and asynchronous modes
    • managing document's text highlighting
  • Support of integration with Microsoft Edge

    XMetaL 17.0 installation contains XMEdge ActiveX control that can be hosted by the XMetaL Resources Manager. XMEdge ActiveX control allows bidirectional interactions between XMetaL and Microsoft Edge via a subset of ICoreWebView2, ICoreWebView2Controller, ICoreWebView2Environment interfaces, and XMetaL APIs and scripts.

    • Access from the Microsoft Edge script engine to XMetaL scripts via:
      • asynchronous post messages to XMetaL
      • asynchronous run XMetaL macros and scripts
      • synchronous/asynchronous XMetaL API calls
      • synchronous/asynchronous XMetaL script global functions calls
    • Access from the XMetaL script engine to Microsoft Edge scripts via:
      • asynchronous post messages to Microsoft Edge
      • asynchronous execution Microsoft Edge scripts
      • helper methods that allow simulation of synchronous browser navigation and script calls
    • Access from Microsoft Edge script engine to ActiveX controls via:
      • creating ActiveX controls by Prog IDs

        ActiveX control methods can be called synchronously or asynchronously from Microsoft Edge scripts.

    • Passing XMEdge notifications and data to the XMetaL script environment

      Notifications and data exchange between XMetaL and Microsoft Edge uses JSON format.

      Notifications and data are related to:

      • Microsoft Edge Navigation events
      • Processing messages
      • Executing scripts
      • Microsoft Edge accelerators keys events
  • Various customer's feature requests and defect fixes are addressed.

Find text on WEB

An XMetaL tool with the following features:

  • Demonstrates XMetaL script customization based on integration with Microsoft Edge

  • Allows finding Active document selected text on the WEB or passing selected text as a URI parameter to online WEB services

  • Allows maintaining home page, search engines and favorite sites

  • Allows defining xml template and pasting it to an XMetaL active document

    Parameters of xml template are web page title, web page URI, clipboard content, and active document selection.

  • Allows running XMetaL macro scripts

    Macro script has full access to XMEdge ActiveX control interfaces, web page scripts, and XMetaL script environment.

  • Contains examples of Google, Bing and WIKI search engines, Google online translate service, paste templates, and test macro

Bookmarks and comments

An XMetaL tool with the following features:

  • Allows marking active document text as a bookmark without changing document content

  • Allows adding/modifying bookmark comments without changing document content

  • Contains four predefined groups of bookmarks

  • Bookmark can be assigned (or reassigned) to any group.

  • Every group of bookmarks has a designated highlighting color.

  • Every group of bookmarks can be shown or hidden.

  • Bookmarks can be sorted or ordered manually.

  • Allows finding bookmarks by bookmark or comments text, opening document and scrolling to selected bookmark

  • Context popup menu and bookmarks macros with connection to "Find and Execute XMetaL Command" allow fast access and efficient bookmarks and comments management.

  • Allows fast navigation between bookmarks

  • Allows showing only bookmarks of specific document

  • Contains three types of user interfaces for flexible and efficient work with documents

DITA 2.0 support preview

This release of XMetaL Author Enterprise now includes DITA 2.0 authoring support using DTDs. XMetaL adds support for the new DITA 2.0 domains and elements along with many other changes that are part of the DITA 2.0 (preview) spec.

XMetaL provides features for authoring <include>, <coderef>, <mathmlref>, <audio>, <video> , <keytext> and <mapresources>. For using <mathmlref>, a separate installer XMetaLAuthorMathMLSupport.exe must be installed in advance.

Please note that use of the DITA 2.0 features requires switching the DITA version preference via the DITA Options... menu item in the Tools menu. By default this switch is set to "1.3".

Integration with DITA-OT 3.7.2

DITA Open Toolkit Release 3.7.2 includes stable IDs in re-used content, a common variable format for generated text strings, and an updated preview of features for the latest draft of the upcoming DITA 2.0 standard, such as the new "combine" chunk action, the <titlealt> element, and the alternative titles domain.

Common format for generated text:

  • Prior to DITA-OT 3.7, there were two different XML structures for adding or modifying generated text (gentext). The base plug-in org.dita.base and any custom overrides defined via the dita.strings.xsl extension point used a root element <strings>, with individual strings in <str> elements with @name attributes. This format was previously used for HTML, and all other output formats except PDF.

Updated DITA 2.0 preview:

  • In addition to the DITA 2.0 preview support provided in DITA-OT 3.5 and 3.6, this release adds support for the DITA 2.0 "combine" chunk action, and updated processing for the latest DRAFT versions of the DITA 2.0 DTD and RELAX NG grammar files from OASIS (as of January 2022 ).

Improved support to DITA-OT publishing log file analysis

DITA OT publishing engine generates extensive logging information that includes:

  • errors and warnings in source files, pre-processed topics locations, applied xslt spreadsheets and ANT scripts, locations of generated intermediate files and folders, locations of applied libraries and plugins

The helper utility parses selected line of log file - for existing files or folders paths.

The helper utility UI allows selecting and opening found files with specific editors or showing them in windows explorer.

Known issues

Tools > Options dialog accelerators don't work sometimes

Some property pages within the new unified options dialog won't respond to keyboard shortcuts until focus is moved into the embedded XFT form that is on the active property page. This limitation relates to Windows' handling of embedded ActiveX controls.

Generate Output fails if filenames or paths contain a mix of Polish characters and spaces

The DITA Open Toolkit included with the software fails to generate output if any of the filenames or paths contain Polish characters AND spaces. The only workaround at this time to adhust filename and paths to exclude spaces OR put all the files into the same folder.

Shortcut key doesn't work after moving focus to Map Editor with XMetaL Navigator

Shortcut key doesn't do anything after moving focus into the Map Editor using the XMetaL Navigator feature. To work around this, please press the <Tab> key once and try your keyboard shortcut again. If it still doesn't work repeat pressing <Tab> key and trying your shortcut key until you get some action.

WebHelp output's Print function doesn't work for local files

When opening a local copy of the WebHelp output into a web browser, especially Google Chrome, clicking the "Print" button results in no action. This behavior is typically the result of a web browser's "same-origin" security model for local files versus files loaded over http.

This behavior can be worked around by running a local web server or deploying the WebHelp webhelp_out folder's contents to a web server and navigating your browser to that web server location.

When using DITA 1.3 XML schemas, reusable component feature is disabled

XMetaL's reusuble component feature has not been setup for the DITA 1.3 XSDs. As a result, related menu items like Reuse > Create Reusable Component are disabled.

WebDAV lock cannot be obtained for document just opened

When a document is opened from a WebDAV server into XMetaL Author Enterprise, an error message maybe displayed stating that the WebDAV lock could not be obtained. This issue is due to the DITA MapEditor feature preprocessing the document's XML with our XMetaL XML processor (XMXML). XMXML contains a lot of the same code as XMetaL Author including the WebDAV locking logic and as such, XMXML ends up obtaining the WebDAV lock first.

To work around this issue, the DITA options must be changed so that ditamap files open into the XML view by default. To change this setting, select the Tools > Options... menu item and select the DITA category's Map Editor tab. On the Map Editor tab, adjust the "Open DITA maps in the:" drop-down list so that "XML view" is selected. Click OK to accept the changes and restart XMetaL.

Note: The DITA feature does not support WebDAV out-of-the-box. A WebDAV capable XMetaL connector is required to use the DITA feature with a WebDAV server.

The x64 Cameras In Focus and Meeting Minutes samples have some features that don't work

A few of the Cameras In Focus and Meeting Minutes sample's features rely upon Microsoft components that do not have an x64 equivalent (e.g. MSScript.ocx, MSCAL1.ocx). Yet other features rely upon a x64 version of Microsoft Word to be installed on the computer. In the x64 version of the software, these samples have been removed from the Help > Samples submenu to avoid issues. You can still invoke either samples template but please use caution when running these samples as they may not gracefully degrade when invoking features with a dependency on these 3rd party items.

Built-in toolbar auto-layout on first launch

When XMetaL Author is started for the first time, the built-in toolbars will each be docked on a separate row. Custom DTD-specific toolbars will be docked more efficiently (i.e. multiple per row) providing there is enough horizontal space to do so. Once toolbars have been reorganized (by dragging them around), their positions will be remembered. This vertically oriented auto-layout for built-in toolbars will also take effect any time the XMetaL Author workspace is reset, which is done by holding the Ctrl key down at startup.

Child submenus/menu items not copied when moving top-level menu buttons

Moving top-level menu buttons will not copy the child submenus or menu items. Similarly, moving submenu items will not duplicate those child items.