XMetaL Author Essential 18.0 Release Notes

Contents

Introduction

XMetaL Author is the leading authoring application for organizations using any XML document type. XMetaL Author also helps you maximize content reuse through tight integration with content repositories, and address advanced publishing requirements with an extensible publishing framework.

XMetaL Author Essential 18.0 new features highlights:
  • XMetaL's integration with ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Google Bard allows authors to reduce writing time and significantly improve documentation quality.
  • Integrating XMetaL with the Grammarly web writing assistant offers advanced features for improving vocabulary usage, rephrasing, and checking for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.
  • XMetaL GIT (distributed version control system) Integration assists authors in managing the history of document content changes.
  • The XMetaL Styling Assistant enables authors to change document view styles via adding or overwriting CSS styles defined in the default XMetaL active document customization.
  • In XMetaL 18.0, XMEdge ActiveX control can be embedded into the Active Document as an image or referenced content viewer.
  • The newly introduced CTM properties assist in configuring the way attribute values appear in the attribute inspector.

For a complete list of new features, see New features.

New features

XMetaL integration with ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Google Bard advanced text processors powered by AI

ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is a GPT-4 large language model-based chatbot developed by OpenAI.

Bing AI is an artificial intelligence-powered search engine developed by Microsoft and powered by the GPT-4 language model.

Bard is Google's AI chat web service powered by advanced large language model (LLM) PaLM 2.

The integration offers a very powerful set of instruments that significantly reduces writing time and improves documentation quality.

XMetaL allows customers to integrate the ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard web services into the XMetaL environment, following the granting of permission by the customer to utilize this service within their system environment.

The integration provides swift access to the XMetaL editor and ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard tools, enabling seamless data exchange.

ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard can be valuable for technical writers in different ways, including:

  • Auto-completing and generating text content based on provided input and selected writing style.

    ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard has been extensively pre-trained to generate content on various documents and texts from diverse sources.

  • Improving writing clarity by reviewing and suggesting improvements to sentence structure, grammar, and vocabulary, ensuring the content is coherent and accessible.
  • Cross-referencing, citations, summarizing, and consistency checks throughout the document.
  • Providing explanations to complex concepts concisely.
  • Language translation.
  • Proofreading by checking spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, and inconsistencies.
  • Answering technical questions by acting as a quick reference tool.
  • Generating initial drafts or ideas for articles, documentation, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), or tutorials.

ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard are integrated into XMetaL Resource Manager.

Integration includes the following features:

  • Side-by-side layout with edited documents
  • Quick switching between ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard and Active Document views
  • Sending ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard instructions and processing responses from active document environment via XMetaL quick navigation commands manager (Ctrl+?)

  • Support for GPT instructions templates

    GPT responses depend on instructions format and clarity. Technical writers can define the list of instructions related to specific projects and tasks. Then test the clarity of responses generated by ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard and make adjustments if needed. Instructions can serve as templates for future requests.

    Supported templates parameters are:
    • Active document selected text
    • Active document ancestor element content for the word under the cursor
    • Document content
    • Text selected in ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard response window
    • Clipboard content

    For complex instruction preprocessing, customers can develop and run XMetaL customization scrips.

    Instructions templates can be exported or imported using text file formats.

  • Support for GPT response processing templates

    Text generated by ChatGPT/Bing AI/Google Bard can be inserted into the active document as the parameter value in a predefined XML fragment template.

    Supported templates parameters are:

    • The selected text in the response
    • The last response
    • The response containing the selection
    • Clipboard content

    For complex response postprocessing, customers can develop and run XMetaL customization scrips.

Integration was developed and implemented as XMetaL customization in the XMetaL Developer environment. XMetaL customers can develop similar integrations with other web services powered by AI.

XMetaL integration with Grammarly online web writing assistant

Grammarly is an advanced online writing web assistant for proofreading and editing documents. Grammarly checks for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, provides rephrasing suggestions, and enhances vocabulary usage. The latest GrammrlyGO extension is a generative AI tool that enables quick composition, rewriting, and generating new ideas, along with offering personalized and relevant suggestions.

Grammarly web assistant is integrated into XMetaL Resource Manager.

The integration provides swift access to the XMetaL editor and Grammarly tools, enabling seamless data exchange.

Integration includes the following features:

  • Side-by-side layout with edited documents
  • Quick switching between Grammarly and Active Document views
  • Supported text processing scopes in Grammarly:
    • Process active document.
    • Process active document selected fragment.
    • Write new text content.
  • Passing Grammarly commands and saving processed text from active document environment via XMetaL quick navigation commands manager (Ctrl+?)
  • Document and document fragment post-processing commands:
    • Replace active document original content.
    • Replace the active document XML element corresponding to the element selected in the spell-checker view.
  • New text or new text fragment processing commands:
    • Insert text to the new element.
    • Append text to the selected element.
    • Replace selected element content with new text.
    • Paste text to the selected location.
  • Additional tools allow showing/hiding XML markup tags and synchronizing selections in the active document and spell-checker view.

XMetaL Git Integration

Git is distributed version control system.

The XMetaL Git Integration feature includes a built-in Git Client designed to assist regular content authors in managing the history of file content using Git.

Suppose you are an experienced Git user and require advanced functionalities like cherry-pick, patches, sub-modules, sub-trees, and git-flow. In that case, it is recommended to utilize a dedicated Git client, which you most likely already use.

Before utilizing this feature, it is advisable to read the XMetaL Git Integration Help document for guidance.

XMetaL Styling Assistant

XMetaL Styling Assistant allows you to add/overwrite new CSS styles to existing active document customization or generate new default CSS styles. Users can switch between "user-defined" and "default customizations".

XMetaL Styling Assistant allows users with initial knowledge of CSS editing to change active document selected element styles: text font family, size, style, weight, color, decoration, background, alignment, display style, whitespace, etc.

XMetaL Styling Assistant commands include:
  • Adding a new style for the selected element
  • Selecting existing CSS selectors for active document-selected elements when it is possible
  • Copying/Pasting/Deleting/Changing orders of styles
  • Editing existing styles in text mode
  • Importing styles from default document customization or existing CSS file
  • Add and traverse @import statements.
  • Synchronize active document selected element attributes value with CSS wizard.
  • Find the selector by getting Active Document current element name or attribute.
  • Generate default CSS style for active document based on existing CTM rules.
  • Show the location of the selected CSS file in Windows Explorer.
  • Open the selected CSS file with the system default or the customer's preferred CSS editor.
  • Reload current customization CSS styles.
  • Apply CSS style changes to all opened XMetaL documents.
  • Restore CSS selectors from the original file.
  • Restore CSS selectors from the session first saved file.

Support of integration with Microsoft Edge

XMetaL 18.0 installation contains XMEdge ActiveX control that can be embedded into the Active Document as a viewer for an image or referenced content.

New CTM Properties

In XMetaL 18.0, two CTM properties have been introduced to assist in configuring how attribute values are displayed in the attribute inspector. These properties offer enhanced capabilities for customization and control.

  • Attribute Value Space Property:
    • The attribute value space property provides fixed values, pre-defined values, hints, templates, or attribute constraints without modifying DTDs.
    • It consists of a collection of pre-defined attribute values specified in a CTM file displayed in the Attribute Inspector. This feature can be applied to any XML attribute type, although it is commonly used for attributes with a CDATA type. Ensuring that all configured attribute values conform to the DTD is essential.
  • Attribute Pinned Lists Property:
    • The Attribute Pinned Lists Property allows authors to customize a selected set of attributes that will consistently appear at the top of the Attribute Inspector.
    • The pinned attributes are displayed first in the order specified in CTM for an element. The remaining attributes are then shown in alphabetical order.

Various customer feature requests and defect fixes are addressed.

Known issues

Known issues of integrations with ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Google Bard web services

Integration with web services relies on a stable internet connection. Due to the high volume of requests, web service responses can be delayed, user interface reactions slowed down or web service hangs. In this case, the recommendation are:

  • Reload the web service.
  • Close-reopen the web service integration tab in XMetaL.
  • Log off from the service account then log in again.

Known issues of integrations with Grammarly web service

Integration with Grammarly relies on a stable internet connection. Due to the high volume of requests, web service responses can be delayed, user interface reactions slowed down or Grammarly hangs. In this case, the recommendation are:

  • Close-reopen the Grammarly integration tab in XMetaL.
  • Log off from the Grammarly account then log in again.
  • In some cases, the Grammarly Desktop application should be shut down and then restarted again. Some of symptoms that require this action are
    • Grammarly doesn't replace spell checker content in Resource Manager with suggestions text.
    • Grammarly suggestions window doesn't appear when the mouse hovers over Grammarly highlighted word.

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.

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.