| What's new in this version: XMLmind XML Editor 9.5.1
Enhancements:
- Made the automatic upgrade of user-installed add-ons after a new version of XXE is installed simpler, more reliable and more systematic.
- XXE will now keep “nagging the user” each time the application is started until all obsolete add-ons are upgraded or uninstalled (either automatically or “by hand”, using the "Install Add-ons" dialog box).
- However these new simplicity and reliability come at a price: using the "Install Add-ons" dialog box, it is no longer possible to install, uninstall or upgrade any of the bundled add-ons found inside the XXE installation directory (XXE_install_dir/addon/). (It's still possible to do this “manually” though.)
- More information in: The "Install Add-ons" dialog box
- Converting a DocBook v4, V5 or v5.1 document to HTML, Web Help and Eclipse Help now preserves the SVG graphics found in this document. Previous versions of XXE automatically converted the SVG graphics to PNG. No such change for the HTML Help, Java Help and EPUB output formats despite the fact that these formats are based on HTML too.
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML version 1.8.4
- Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.8.2
- Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.2.0
- Upgraded XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short) to version 1.4.4
- "FlatLaf Look and Feel" add-on: updated FlatLaf to version 1.2
- XMLmind XML Editor is now officially supported on Java™ 16 platforms
Fixed:
- Commands insertCharByName, insertCharSequence, insertControlChar, showMatchingChar and the Characters tool did not honor Overwrite Mode (OVR). They always worked as if Insert Mode (INS) was turned on.
Possible incompatibilities:
- Search tool: the "Smart text boundaries" option is now turned off by default, as it is rarely needed and also because it may cause the Search tool to fail in finding some strings for certain document types.
- Command xpathSearch is now bound to keyboard shortcut Esc X (type Escape then type Shift-X). Previously it was bound to Esc s (type Escape then type S). Command search is now bound to keyboard shortcut Esc s. These two commands are mainly useful when recording macros.
Regressions:
- Using the "Install Add-ons" dialog box, it is no longer possible to install, uninstall or upgrade any of the bundled add-ons found inside the XXE installation directory (XXE_install_dir/addon/) .
- Suppressed the now useless, "Install add-ons in the user's preferences directory", "Install add-ons in XXE installation directory" and "Installation directory depends on the add-on" options from the "Preferences" dialog box, "Install add-ons" section. Optional add-ons are now always installed in the user's preferences directory (XXE_user_preferences_dir/addon/).
XMLmind XML Editor 9.5.0
- New "Bidi Support" add-on, which adds bidirectional script support to XMLmind XML Editor (XXE)
- This new add-on is not installed by default. If you plan to author documents containing right-to-left scripts (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew) using XXE, you must really install this add-on (using "Options|Install Add-ons"), as, out of the box, XXE has no bidirectional script support whatsoever. Without this add-on, even the most basic editing features, like the location of the insertion cursor (caret), won't work or would be incorrect.
- A sample XHTML document containing English, Arabic and Hebrew, created using XXE, is found in bidi_support_addon_install_dir/samples/sample1_en_ar_he.html. Some DocBook and DITA samples are also found in the same directory.
- By reading "XMLmind XML Editor - Bidirectional Script Support", you'll learn to use XXE as effectively as possible in order to create documents mixing right-to-left (RTL; like Arabic and Hebrew) and left-to-right (LTR; like English and French) scripts.
Other enhancements:
-Reorganized and improved the View menu. This menu has now all the entries and submenus needed to let the user change the way tree views and styled views are rendered on screen: "Text Size", "Display Images", "Show Tags", "Tree View Details" (new), "Add Views" (replaces previous "Multiple Views" submenu) and the list of stylesheets found at the end of the menu.
- Last but not least, the view settings of the document being edited are now automatically made persistent across editing sessions.
- Moreover, if you wish to use the view settings of the document being edited as the defaults for all the documents of the same type (e.g. all DITA Topic documents), suffice to use new "Options|Customize Configuration|Use Current View Settings as Default" command.
- It is possible to install both the "RenderX XEP XSL-FO processor plug-in" add-on and the "Apache FOP 1.x XSL-FO processor plug-in" add-on. When this is the case, by default, XEP supersedes FOP. The "Add-on|XEP" preferences sheet, which is found in the "Options|Preferences" dialog, has a new "Use Apache FOP rather RenderX XEP" check-box which lets you change this.
- Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.0.11
- Upgraded XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short) to version 1.4.3
- Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.8.1
- Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.1.1
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML version 1.8.3
- Upgraded the XMLmind XSL-FO Converter (XFC for short) plug-in to version 6.3.1
- Upgraded Saxon to version 9.9.1.8
- Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.14
- Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.6
- "FlatLaf Look and Feel" add-on: updated FlatLaf to version 1.0
- "Edit source" add-on: upgraded its RSyntaxTextArea components to version 3.1.2 which implements Markdown syntax highlighting
- XMLmind XML Editor is now officially supported on Java™ 15 platforms
- XMLmind XML Editor is now officially supported on macOS Big Sur (version 11.0), except on Macs having an Apple M1 (ARM-based) processor. Macs having an Apple M1 will be officially supported by XMLmind Software as soon as both a “native” OpenJDK and a “native” OpenJFX are available for this platform.
Bug-fixes:
- On Windows, with a text size set to 100% (that is, the system default), the default font size of 11pt used by XXE for the styled views caused some characters to be oddly spaced (“uneven kerning”).
Regressions:
- There is no way to specify the followings view settings: "Display Images", "Show Tags", "Tree View Details", for all documents whatever their document types. Corresponding user preferences: imageViewportMode, showTags, showTableTags, treeViewShowAttribute, treeViewShowText, treeViewShowComment, treeViewShowPI, have been discontinued.
- The "Integrated spreadsheet engine" add-on has been discontinued.
Possible incompatibilities:
- The base font size of the tree view is now expressed in “CSS points” (a unit which is independent of the platform, screen, display scaling, etc), just like the default font size of the styled view. Its default value is 10pt. The corresponding user preferences key has changed from "treeViewBaseFontSize" to "treeViewFontSize".
XMLmind XML Editor 9.4.1
Enhancements:
- Any configuration (DITA, DocBook, XHTML, etc): added a handy "Change case" toolbar button to the "Convert Text" frame. The corresponding command already existed but using it required remembering the following keyboard shortcuts: Esc l to change to lowercase, Esc u to change to uppercase, Esc c to capitalize the first letter of each word.
- Moreover, the underlying convertCase command is now effective when several nodes are explicitly selected. The previous version was limited to a node selection containing a single node.
- Added a "Highlight all" option to the Search tool
- New "JSON document format" add-on, installed by default. This add-on lets you use XMLmind XML Editor to edit a JSON file as if it were an XML file. This add-on serves as a complement to the "Edit source" add-on, also installed by default.
- Why bother editing a JSON file as if it were an XML file? In a nutshell, because it's easier and safer than with text editors. XMLmind XML Editor won't let you create a malformed or inconsistent JSON file. Moreover the styled view of a JSON document in XXE is designed to be easy to read.
- However, if you don't like this feature, simply open the Options|Preferences dialog box, select the "Add-on|JSON format" section and check "Edit JSON as Text"
- Updated the icons and request URIs of the web services used by default by the Web Search menu items
- "FlatLaf Look and Feel" add-on: updated FlatLaf to version 0.41
- Upgraded the XMLmind XSL-FO Converter (XFC for short) plug-in to version 6.3
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML version 1.8.2 which may be used to convert DOCX to DocBook 5.1 assembly
Bug fixes:
- macOS only: the contextual menu of the embedded media player (styled view of XHTML 5, DITA and DocBook 5.1 documents) and the contextual menu of the embedded web browser representing an iframe element (styled view of XHTML 5) did not always automatically hide themselves after a menu entry was clicked upon.
- There are still problems with the contextual menu of the embedded media player on macOS though, as the Rewind, Forward and Back menu entries work erratically on this platform.
- Linux, HiDPI screen: text size was too large in files created by File|Print.
Possible incompatibilities:
- XMLmind XML Editor now checks for updates and download its add-ons using "http://www.xmlmind.com/" URLs. In previous versions, it used "https://www.xmlmind.com/" URLs to do that.
- Two reasons for this change: 1) these public service URLs are faster to access using HTTP and do not really need encryption; 2) the HTTPS implementation of server www.xmlmind.com currently seems to report false, random, "400 Bad Request" errors.
- Changed the default foreground color of some CSS-generated form controls (text-field, text-area, spinner, etc). This change was needed to support Java™ Look&Feels having a dark theme (e.g. "FlatDark"). More information here.
XMLmind XML Editor 9.4.0
Enhancements:
Any configuration (DITA, DocBook, XHTML, etc):
- New "Set ID" toolbar button. This button displays a menu having 3 entries: "Set ID", "Unset ID" and all new "List Anchors and Links". This last menu entry displays a very convenient dialog box letting the user search and select anchors (that is, any element having an ID) and links.
- More generally, simpler, better organized, enhanced toolbar. For example, when you use the toolbar to add a fig element to your DITA topic, you are now prompted to specify an image file.
- Ctrl-Alt-click upon a link of any kind to follow it. (Cmd-Alt-click on the Mac.) This new mouse action is a handy alternative to the "Follow Link" entry of the contextual menu.
- "FlatLaf Look and Feel" add-on: updated FlatLaf to version 0.38
- "Edit source" add-on: upgraded its RSyntaxTextArea components to version 3.1.1
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML version 1.8.1_01
- Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.0.10
- Upgraded XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short) to version 1.4.2
- Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.1
- Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.8
- Upgraded Saxon to version 9.9.1.7
- Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.13
- Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.5
Bug fixes:
- The UndoManager had problems undoing TextNode.setText. Fortunately this API was not used to write any of the stock commands.
- When the node path bar was configured to display attributes such as id, class, etc, undoing/redoing changes made to these attributes did not always automatically update the node path bar.
- The image map editor now adds newly created areas at the end of the area list. Previously, it did this at the beginning of the list which was not convenient when the areas are to be numbered.
Possible incompatibilities:
- The default font size of the styled view has changed from 10pt to 11pt. The corresponding user preferences key has changed from "styledViewBaseFontSize" to "defaultFontSize".
- The "FlatLaf Look and Feel" add-on is now installed by default. On Linux, FlatLaf and its light theme (called "FlatLight") is now used as the default Look & Feel. This is needed because on Linux, the “system” Look & Feel (called "Metal") looks rather outdated.
- Removed the "Select|Navigation" submenu. The "Show History" and "Remember this Location" commands are now found in the short menu displayed by the button found next to the "Go Back" and "Go Forward" toolbar buttons.
Regressions:
- Removed the "Select|Link" submenu. The combination of new mouse action Ctrl-Alt-click (or alternatively the "Follow Link" entry of the contextual menu) and new "List Anchors and Links" dialog are much more convenient to use than the removed submenu.
- The Alt-INSERT keyboard shortcut (bound to the "Remember this Location" command) is no longer available.
XMLmind XML Editor 9.3.0
Enhancements:
- Any configuration (DITA, DocBook, XHTML, etc): the node path bar can now be configured to display the value of any attribute you want. XHTML example: html > body > pre#example.fancy.line-numbers > code. Character "#" is used to prefix the value of attribute id. Character "." is used to prefix the tokens comprising the value of attribute class.
- These settings are done using a dialog box displayed when selecting the "Customize" item of the contextual menu of the “file icon” found at the very beginning of the node path bar. This contextual menu may also contain a number of checkboxes letting the user quickly hide and show the attributes declared using the "Customize" dialog box.
- Dragging a document tab and dropping it outside any XXE window (e.g. onto the desktop) now opens a new main window and moves the active document to this new window. It works the same as the "Move Document to New Window" item of the right click menu of a document tab.
- DocBook and DITA configurations: CALS tables (not HTML tables, not simpletables) layout elements (colspec, spanspec) and attributes (colname, spanname, namest, nameend) are now extensively checked for correctness and consistency. Semantic warnings are added to the Validity tool when errors preventing a table to be correctly rendered are found.
- Converting a DocBook document to any XSL-FO based output format now generates PDF, RTF, WML, DOCX, ODT files hopefully looking better than before. This is implemented by changing the default values of a large number of DocBook XSL Stylesheets parameters and attribute sets.
- New add-on called "FlatLaf Look and Feel" containing a clean, simple and elegant “Look & Feel” for XMLmind XML Editor. Many thanks to FormDev Software for having implemented such a nice, fast and reliable Look & Feel for Java Swing desktop applications!
- This add-on is not installed by default. Feel free to download and install it using "Options|Install Add-ons". Once this is done, please select "FlatLight" (light theme) or "FlatDark" (dark theme) from Options|Preferences, General section, Style combobox, then restart XMLmind XML Editor as instructed.
- This add-on is supported on all platforms. It is especially nice to have on Linux where the default “cross-platform”, Look & Feel (called "Metal") looks rather outdated. It may also interest Windows and Mac users who want a dark theme or simply prefer how FlatLaf looks compared to the default, “system”, Look & Feel.
- "Edit source" add-on: upgraded its RSyntaxTextArea components to version 3.0.8, which fixes a minor XML autocompletion bug
- Upgraded the XMLmind XSL-FO Converter (XFC for short) plug-in to version 6.2
- Upgraded XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short) to version 1.4.1
- Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.0.1
- Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.7.1
- Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.0.9
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML version 1.8.1
- XMLmind XML Editor, which passed all non-regression tests, is now officially supported on Java™ 14 platforms
Bug fixes:
- NOT FIXED: when a file path containing an accented character (e.g. " é ") encoded using a pair of characters —a non-accented character (e.g. " e ") followed by a combining diacritical mark (e.g. " ' ", combining acute accent U+0301; more information in "Unicode equivalence") — to an URL, this pair of characters is not preserved. The pair of characters (e.g. " e' ") is converted to a single accented character (e.g. " é ").
- This Java™ bug may lead to hard to understand "file not found" issues. Unfortunately we don't have a workaround for this bug.
- Apache FOP options: the "Choose a TTF font and specify its aliases" dialog box picked the localized font family name (e.g. "BIZ UD明朝 Medium") rather the normal font family name ("BIZ UDMincho Medium"). This bug caused FOP to report a fatal error (e.g. "BIZ-UDMinchoM.ttc: Name does not exist in the TrueType collection: BIZ UD明朝 Medium") when converting an XML document to PDF.
- After modifying a document containing inclusions and undoing first modification, it was to possible to redo this first modification.
- The wait cursor of the help browser kept spinning —making the help browser unusable after that— when moving from one help topic to another and when these two help topics were found in the same help page. For example, when first displaying help topic help_page23.html#foo and when displaying immediately after that help topic help_page23.html#bar.
- MathML preference "Use bundled fonts" printed a number of "cannot register MathML font java.awt.Font[..." error messages on the console when a set of DejaVu fonts was installed on the computer.
Possible incompatibilities:
- When converting a DocBook document to any XSL-FO based output format (PDF, RTF, WML, DOCX, ODT), the generated file may look different than in previous versions. For example, when generating PDF, the default values of parameters admon.graphics and admon.textlabel are: admon.graphics=1, admon.textlabel=0. In previous versions, the default values of these parameters were: admon.graphics=0, admon.textlabel=1.
- We had to implement a large number of minor changes in order to decently support the dark theme of the new, optional, FlatLaf Look & Feel. Some of these minor changes may also impact how CSS extension content objects such as check-box, combo-box, date-time-picker, etc, are rendered.
- A number of keyboard shortcuts have been removed from the XML source view. For example, Ctrl-NUMERIC_KEYPAD_DIVIDE which collapsed all tags. These keyboard shortcuts were not really useful and seemed to be error prone.
Regressions:
- The "Google® virtual drive plug-in" add-on has been discontinued due to drastic changes to Google security policies
- The "FTP virtual drive plug-in" add-on only supports the FTP protocol. FTPS and SFTP protocol support have been discontinued
XMLmind XML Editor 9.2.0
Enhancements:
- When converting DITA, DocBook or an Ebook to any (X)HTML based format (EPUB, Web Help, etc), the generated HTML pages looks much better than before. Moreover the generated Web Help is now “responsive” by default. Details about the Web Help below.
- New add-on "Paste from Word Processor or Browser", now installed by default whatever the platform, supersedes the previous add-on which was called "Paste from Word"
- This add-on adds an entry called "Paste from Word Processor or Browser" to the "Paste As" submenu found in the XHTML, DocBook or DITA Topic menus
- This menu entry imports the HTML copied to the clipboard by word processors or web browsers and intelligently pastes it into the XML document being edited
- Extensive efforts are made to decently support the “non-filtered HTML” copied by MS-Word to the clipboard
- When an application other than MS-Word is used, the quality of the result you'll get in XXE highly depends on what has been copied to the clipboard. In all cases, XXE tries very hard to import something simple, clean and valid at the expense of the fidelity to the original data.
- XHTML5 configuration: very slightly changed our in-house XML Schema and its companion Schematron to make it even closer to what's specified in the HTML Living Standard in terms of conformance requirements for authors
- Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 3.0.0_02. The Web Help generated by whc v3 gets a fresh new look
- It is now “responsive” by default, that is, it adapts its layout to the size of the screen (e.g. it can adapt to the screen of a smartphone in portrait mode). This feature is controlled by new parameter wh-responsive-ui.
- It does not leverage jQuery UI anymore (only jQuery now). However some new parameters (e.g. wh---navigation-background-color="#F6F8FA") may be used to override most fonts and colors used in the generated Web Help
- New parameter wh-ui-language may be used to specify the language used by the messages of the generated Web Help (tab labels, button tool tips, etc). The default is to use the language of the Web browser
- Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.7.0_02
- Upgraded XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short) to version 1.4.0_02
- Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.0.8
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML version 1.8.0_02
- Upgraded Saxon to version 9.9.1.6
- Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.12
- Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.4
- XMLmind XML Editor is now officially supported on Java™ 13 platforms and on macOS Catalina (version 10.15)
Bug fixes:
- Converting a DocBook 5.1 assembly pointing to chapters or topics embedding SVG elements (imagedata/svg:svg) or MathML elements (equation/mml:math, inlineequation/mml:math, imagedata/mml:math, etc) to any HTML-based format (e.g. HTML, Web Help, EPUB) gave unusable results
Incompatibilities:
- When converting DITA, DocBook or an Ebook to Web Help, the following XSLT stylesheet parameters, all related to jQuery UI, are not supported anymore: wh-jquery-css, wh-jquery-custom-theme, wh-jquery-theme, wh-jquery-ui
XMLmind XML Editor 9.1.0
Enhancements:
- Added a "Toggle the visibility of elements belonging to certain categories" button to the Edit tool. This menu is similar to the "Toggle the visibility of attributes belonging to certain categories" button already found in the Attributes tool
- The feature implemented by this button consists in “hiding” some of the elements which otherwise would have been listed by the Edit tool
- In the case of the XHTML5 configuration, these “hidden elements” are script, template, slot, noscript, which are either very rarely used (noscript) or allowed almost anywhere in the body of a document (template). Note that, for more convenience for the author, the script element is “hidden” everywhere in an XHTML5 document, expect inside the head element
- In the case of the DocBook and DITA configurations, the “hidden elements” are very rarely used elements such as syntaxdiagram, msgblock, etc (DITA Topic) or productionset, msgset, etc (DocBook)
- XHTML5 configuration: updated our in-house XML Schema and added a companion Schematron in order to implement most of the conformance requirements for authors specified in the HTML Living Standard (starting from the 2019-07-18 update). More information in "About the XHTML 5 XML Schema and Schematron developed by XMLmind"
XHTML configurations:
- Added a "Preview Settings" entry to the XHTML menu. This menu entry displays a dialog box which may be used to specify one or more CSS stylesheets to be automatically added to the preview
- This feature is useful when you use XXE to edit some “pure XHTML contents” (e.g. the text of an article) and want to see how it will look like once published
- Added an auto-completion facility to the value field of the Attributes tool when the attribute being edited is class. For example, if selected element is ul then this facility will list all the class names already added to all the ul elements found in the document being edited
- DITA Topic: specifying inheritnum in the outputclass attribute of an ordered list now causes the list item numbering to inherit from outer-level ordered lists. For example, using this feature (e.g. ), the items of a list nested at level 2 are labelled "1.A.", "1.B.", "1.C.", etc.
- This inheritnum attribute value is rendered on the screen by the DITA Topic CSS stylesheet and is also supported when converting a DITA document to other formats. See XMLmind DITA Converter v3.6.1_01 below
- DITA Topic, DocBook configurations: added "Continue Numbering" and "Inherit Numbering" entries to the menu displayed by the "Change list type" button found in the tool bar
Bug fixes:
- DITA Topic configuration: the dialog box used to specify a reference to a topic or non-topic element (e.g. href attribute of an xref or link element, conref and conrefend attributes, etc) listed URIs having fragments starting with "#./" (an abbreviated fragment-identifier syntax introduced in DITA 1.3 that replaces the topic ID with "." ) for some cases for which this syntax is invalid
- Copying an XML element (using Java™ method Element.copy()) in a document in which the comparison of revisions was enabled (Tool|Revisions|Enable the Comparison of Revisions) also copied the serial number of this element. By chance, this was not a problem in any of the stock commands, but this could cause problems in custom commands created by third-party developers
Incompatibilities:
- The above bug fix implies that some of the DITA documents created using older versions of XXE may now be found having errors
- In a nutshell, direct URI references like "foo.dita#./bar" now cause errors. Only “local” direct URI references like "#./bar" are now accepted
Some of the XHTML5 documents created using older versions of XXE may now be found having validity errors. Two reasons for that:
- XHTML5 documents are now more thoroughly checked for validity using our new XML Schema+Schematron combination
- The conformance requirements for authors specified in the HTML Living Standard slightly differ from those found in the HTML 5.2 W3C Recommendation (which was used to implement our previous, in-house, XHTML5 XML Schema). For example, The ruby element may now have ruby, rt and rp child elements, but not rb and rtc child elements anymore
- CSS: changed the value of the normal line-height from 1.0 to 1.2. In consequence, modified all the stylesheets to increase the standard vertical space between blocks (margin-top, margin-bottom) from 1.33ex to 1em. So now the styled view of XXE should be easier to read
- Interface com.xmlmind.xmleditapp.kit.NewDocumentService has changed. The newDocument methods now return the URL of the newly created document or null. Previously, they returned a boolean. This change may impact custom commands created by third-party developers
Commercial changes:
- XMLmind DITA Editor Personal Edition, XMLmind DocBook Editor Personal Edition, XMLmind XHTML Editor, both Personal and Professional Editions, have all been discontinued
- The "XMLmind FO Converter XSL-FO processor plug-in" add-on is no longer included in XMLmind DITA Editor Professional Edition and XMLmind DocBook Editor Professional Edition. Anyway, this plug-in was not really usable in these special editions as it ran in “evaluation mode”, that is, it generated output containing random duplicate letters
- As a consequence, the "Convert Document" submenus of the DITA Editor and the DocBook Editor do not contain "Convert to RTF", WML, DOCX, ODT, entries anymore
- The "Word To XML" add-on is now installed by default in both the Personal and Professional Editions of XMLmind XML Editor. In Personal Edition, this add-on runs in “evaluation mode”, that is, it generates output containing random words replaced by string "[XMLmind]")
- XMLmind XML Editor Personal Edition does not have any export capability anymore. All the entries found in the "Convert Document" submenus run in “evaluation mode”, that is, they now generate output containing random duplicate letters
- XMLmind XML Editor Personal Edition now has an "Evaluate XMLmind XML Editor Professional Edition features" check box found in the General|Features section of the Preferences dialog. This check box is initially checked to make it easy evaluating the features implemented by the "File|Import DOCX" menu entry and the "Convert Document" submenus
- However, if you are not evaluating XMLmind XML Editor Professional Edition and just want to use a free, streamlined, fully functional, XML editor, simply uncheck this check box, restart XXE and the "File|Import DOCX" menu entry and the "Convert Document" submenus will go away
XMLmind XML Editor 9.0.0
Enhancements:
- DITA maps, DocBook 5.1 assemblies and Ebooks (that is, maps of all kinds) are now automatically made master documents.
- If you don't like this policy, simply uncheck "Maps are automatically made master documents" found in Options|Preferences, "Tools|Master document" section.
- If you don't want this to happen, but only for certain maps, simply uncheck "Tools|Use as Master Document". When this is done, the map is added to the list of exceptions called "Except for the following maps" found in Options|Preferences, "Tools|Master document" section.
- New, very simple, configuration called "Subject Scheme Map" makes it easy and safe creating subject scheme maps. See also new XMLmind DITA Converter v3.5 software component below.
- Made the -new command-line option really usable.
- The "Create" buttons found in the "Edit topicref", "Edit Module" and "Insert or Edit Book Division" dialog boxes now display the File|New dialog box with the relevant category of document templates (that is, "DITA", "DocBook v5+/5.1" and "XHTML/Ebook" respectively) already selected, which is convenient and less error-prone.
- When the "Edit source" add-on is installed (which is the case by default), XXE may be used to edit plain text files. XXE now understands the GNU Emacs file variable called "coding". In absence of a BOM, variable coding may be used to specify the encoding of a text file.
- Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.11.
- "Edit source" add-on: upgraded its RSyntaxTextArea components to version 3.0.3.
- Upgraded the FTP virtual drive plug-in to edtFTPj/PRO 5.3.1.
- Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version 1.0.7_01.
- Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 2.2.0_01.
- The "Easy Profiling" add-on, which is installed by default, now automatically creates a subject scheme map file behind the scene when a ".profiles" file is saved to disk.
- Upgraded XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short) to version 1.3.2_01.
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML version 1.7.0_01.
- XMLmind XML Editor, which passed all non-regression tests, is now officially supported on Java™ 12 platforms.
Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.5.0_01 which supports subject scheme maps as follows:
- The set of attribute values specified in a subject scheme map is used to validate attribute values in DITA maps and topics and also in DITAVAL files.
- Example: if the subject scheme map specifies that the values of attribute audience are limited to "beginner", "intermediate" and "advanced", then an error will be reported for an element having attribute audience="expert".
- The hierarchy of attribute values specified in a subject scheme map is taken into account when filtering and flagging a DITA document.
- Example: if the DITAVAL filter specifies that all elements having attribute platform="linux" are to be excluded and if the subject scheme map specifies that value "redhat" of attribute platform is a kind of "linux", then all elements having attribute platform="redhat" will excluded too.
Bug fixes:
- It was not possible to wrap (Edit|Wrap) an XHTML div into a div.
- Options|Preferences, Add-on|MathML section: the "Use Bundled Fonts" button almost never had any effect on the MathML displayed in the styled view. It worked only when the bundled fonts happened to be also installed on the computer running XXE.
- In some cases, double-clicking a topicref in a DITA map marked as being a master document ("Tools|Use a Master Document") successfully opened the corresponding topic but failed to colorize the topic tab with the color of the map tab. (This common color indicates that both documents belong to the same group.)
Incompatibilities:
- Java™ 8+ is now required to compile and run XXE. Both Oracle Java and OpenJDK are now officially supported.
- Due to the recent changes in Oracle Java™ licensing, the setup.exe and ".dmg" distributions of XXE are now bundled with the latest version of OpenJDK (e.g. v12.0.1).
- Moreover, the setup.exe distribution now includes a 64-bit version of the Java™ runtime. The 32-bit version of Windows are still officially supported by XMLmind Software, but when this is the case, XXE's private 64-bit Java™ runtime will not be used and you'll have to install a 32-bit Java™ 8+ runtime on your computer.
- Renamed Edit command "Convert [wrap]" to "Wrap".
- Sightly changed the parameters and the behavior of the XXE.new command in order to implement some of the above enhancements.
- See above enhancement about editing plain text files in XXE.
XMLmind XML Editor 8.3.0
Enhancements:
- New TEI Lite configuration.
- Improved the clipboard viewer dialog box. See "Clipboard utilities".
- Documented and added a couple of enhancements related to Byte Order Mark (BOM) support to the Edit|Preferences, Add-on|Text format preferences sheet. See "Text format options".
- "Paste from Word" add-on: index entries marking a page range (e.g. field XE "XML" r "OpenXMLPageRange") in the MS-Word document are now partially supported. Partially only, because the "Paste from Word" add-on does not know how determine the end of a range in the HTML generated by MS-Word. Therefore the index terms created by the "Paste from Word" add-on are now correctly positioned at the start of the range, but they are just “plain index terms” and not index terms marking a range.
- The "Easy Profiling" add-on creates better DITAVAL files out of a .profiles file. When the rev attribute is used for flagging, this add-on now creates a revprop element rather than a prop element. Moreover, a left border or a right border (and no other border) specified using the "Set Style" dialog box is translated to a changebar attribute.
- Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 2.1.3_03.
- Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.4, which contains two important bug fixes related to “flagging” contents using a .ditaval conditional processing file.
Bug fixes:
- CSS property caption-side was not honored when the subject of the CSS rule had display: table-caption.
- XHTML configuration: when the style attribute is selected in the Attributes tool, clicking the Edit button displays a specialized editor. In addition to the easy-to-use Styles tab, this specialized editor also has a "CSS Source" tab letting the user type any CSS property she/he wants (e.g. "float: left;"). The bug was that there was to way to make this specialized editor accept CSS properties other than those supported by XXE's CSS engine.
- The styled view of a DocBook 5.1 assembly displays the title of referenced topics. This displayed title included the text of the indexterm elements found in the title element of the topic.
- The online help browser of XXE displayed a blank window when the computer running XXE was not connected to the Internet.
Incompatibilities:
- Now that command addBlockInFlow can be parameterized using system property "configuration_name inlineElementNames", native commands xhtml.addBlock and dita.doAddBlock are no longer useful and thus have been removed from all the XHTML and DITA configurations.
- CSS extensions: icon(collapsed-right) is now an alias for icon(pop-right), icon(expanded-down) is now an alias for icon(pop-down), hence collapser() is now equivalent to collapser(collapsed-icon, icon(pop-right,0), expanded-icon, icon(pop-down,0)).
XMLmind XML Editor 8.2.0
Enhancements:
- DocBook, DITA configurations: added "Add footnote" and "Add note" buttons to the toolbar
- XHTML, DocBook, DITA configurations: added a "Normalize Whitespace" entry to the menu displayed by the Listing toolbar button. This entry invokes new normalizeWhiteSpacePre command which normalizes whitespace in implicitly or explicitly selected element having attribute space="preserve", typically a program listing. Normalizing whitespace means: expanding tab characters to a number of space characters and removing the space characters which are common to the beginning of all text lines (that is, removing the superfluous “indentation” in the program listing, if any)
- Styled view of a DITA topic, XHTML 5 and DocBook 5.1 document: the right-click popup menu of a media player has a new "Use Low-level Editor" item. Selecting this item replaces the media player by an “object view” of the media element. This “object view” may be used as a low-level media element editor. It may be used for example to add track child elements to a video element, something that the media player dialog box cannot do. More information
- The dialog box displayed by the insertCharByName command (bound to keystroke ESC n) now accepts character representations other than character names (e.g. "nbsp", "mdash"). For example, character TAB may now be specified as any of the following: "t", "11", "x9", "u0009", "U+0009" ," ", " ", "011", "0x9"
- New Lightweight DITA (AKA LwDITA) configuration, installed by default, may be used to create XDITA (very small subset of DITA XML, plus new audio and video elements) maps and topics. A sample XDITA document containing audio and video elements is found in lwdita_addon_install_dir/sample/sample.ditamap
- Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.3 which◦in addition to syntax highlighting, can add line numbers and expand tabs in any element specializing pre; fully supports Lightweight DITA (AKA LwDITA), whether XDITA (very small subset of DITA XML, plus new audio and video elements), HDITA (topics and maps written in HTML5) or MDITA Extended Profile (topics and maps written in Markdown). Please note that Markdown support of any kind in XMLmind XML Editor requires the add-on called "Markdown support" to be installed (which is the case by default) and also requires using a Java™ 1.8+ runtime
- Upgraded XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short) to version 1.3 which, in addition to HTML, supports pages written in Markdown. More information in Markdown support
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML version 1.5.1
- Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 2.1.3_01
- Upgraded Saxon to version 9.8.0.14
- Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.10
- Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.3
Bug fixes:
- Clicking Ignore, "Ignore All" or "Learn" in the "Check Spelling" dialog box did not stop the corresponding word from being underlined (by the “on the fly” spell checker, using a red wavy line) in the styled or tree view. Note that this is still the case if you just click Ignore. If you want the word to stop being underlined, please click "Ignore All" or "Learn"
- The "A sample customize.xxe" add-on: on Windows, typing 2 back quote characters (`) in a row to insert an English left quotation mark (“) did not work because the back quote is a dead character
- Now typing 2 apostrophe characters (') in a row inserts an English left quotation mark (“) and typing 3 apostrophe characters (') in a row inserts an English right quotation mark (”)
- Added the following new character sequence: typing 2 comma characters (,) in a row inserts an German left quotation mark („) and typing 3 comma characters (,) in a row inserts an German right quotation mark (“)
XMLmind XML Editor 7.4.1
Enhancements:
- Processing-instruction inserted as direct child of the root element of a DITA map, DocBook or XHTML document allows to automatically select the set of custom XSLT and CSS stylesheets called "name" when converting this document using the "Convert Document" menu. More information in "How to automatically select a set of custom stylesheets when converting a given document?"
- Pressing ENTER at the beginning of a heading element (XHTML h1, h2, ..., h6 or DocBook bridgehead) now inserts a paragraph element before this heading. Pressing ENTER at the end of a heading element now inserts a paragraph element after this heading. In previous version of XXE, this action had the effect of inserting a new heading element, which was less useful. If you really want to insert a new heading element, it's still possible to use Ctrl+Shift-ENTER (to insert same heading before) and Ctrl-ENTER (to insert same heading after) when the caret is inside an existing heading element
- Most commands (Search, Find Element, the Validity tool, etc) which select text or nodes and then scroll the document view in order to show the new selection now center this new selection in the document view
- Added "html" and "htm" as possible file name extensions for XHTML documents. As a consequence, it's now possible to open ".html" and ".htm" files by double-clicking on their names in the Folder Tool
- Menu item "XHTML|Preview" now also works for an XHTML document having a root element other than html (e.g. div, section, article)
- Added XPath 1.0 extension functions lower-case() and upper-case(). These extension functions are equivalent to their XPath 2.0 counterparts
- Upgraded Saxon to version 9.7.0.18
- Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version v1.0.2
- Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.1.4
- Upgraded XMLmind Web Help Compiler (whc for short) to version 1.4.4, which contains an important bug fix
- Upgraded the XMLmind XSL-FO Converter (XFC for short) plug-in to version 5.4.5
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML v1.2.3
- Upgraded the Apache Batik plug-in to version 1.9
- Upgraded the Apache FOP plug-in to version 2.2.
Bug fixes:
- The xxetool command-line utility failed with an EmptyStackException when converting any XML document containing fields computed by the integrated spreadsheet engine.
- A false error was reported when XHTML attribute iframe/@srcdoc did not contain "
Enhancements:
- XHTML, DITA topic, DocBook configurations: the "Add image" toolbar button now allows to add an image map to your document.
- Once the image map element has been added, right-clicking anywhere in this element and selecting "Edit Image Map" from the contextual popup menu displays a specialized image map editor. This image map editor allows to add “hot areas” to your image. More information in the "Edit Image Map" dialog box.
- New image map editor also has a facility allowing to make the “hot areas” visible and/or to give them numbers so they can be referred to by number. This facility automatically generates an SVG file embedding the original image file and adding the chosen visual marks above the embedded image.
- Command "DocBook|Link callouts" has better support for graphicco, imageobjectco, programlistingco, screenco elements, that is, for elements using area and/or areaset elements rather than co elements to mark areas of interest in an image or a program listing.
- XHTML iframe element is now rendered by embedding a Web browser in the styled view
- The XSLT stylesheets used to convert XHTML to XSL-FO now generate a numbered list for a XHTML map element, with one list item per area element. A list item contains the link specified by the area element. No list items are generated for “dead areas” (area elements specifying no link at all). This numbered list may be suppressed by setting XSLT stylesheet parameter show-map-links to 'no'.
- When possible, the caret now remains at the same location —between the two joined fragments— after joining adjacent elements by pressing DEL or BACKSPACE
- Upgraded XMLmind Assembly Processor to version v1.0.1
- Upgraded the "Word To XML" add-on to XMLmind Word To XML v1.2.1_01
- Upgraded XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) to version 3.1.2
- Upgraded Saxon to version 9.7.0.15
XMLmind XML Editor 7.4.0
Bug fixes:
- When converting a DocBook document to Web Help with the following XSLT stylesheet parameters: suppress.navigation=0, navig.graphics=1, the navigation icons (Home, Previous, Next, Up) were missing in the generated HTML pages.
- "DocBook|Paste As|Paste From Word" did not work in a DocBook 5.1 topic, nor in any DocBook document conforming to a customized schema (e.g. ).
- DocBook CSS stylesheets: refsection, refsect1, refsect2 and refsect3 were not styled as collapsible blocks.
- XHTML 5: data-XXX attributes were not copied when using Edit|Convert. For example: < strong id="i1" data-foo="bar" > was converted to < strong id="i1" > and not to < strong id="i1" data-foo="bar" > as expected.
- XHTML: an iframe element was saved as an empty element, that is, as follows: < iframe src="http://www.xmlmind.com" >. This is interpreted by Web browsers as an iframe start tag with no corresponding close tag. To fix this issue, an iframe element is now saved as follows: < iframe src="http://www.xmlmind.com" >< /iframe >.
- Opening a document styled using a CSS stylesheet making a very heavy use of label(xpath,XPath_expression) was very slow.
- On Windows, dragging and dropping the URL of a media file (e.g. "http://techslides.com/demos/sample-videos/small.mp4") from a Web browser onto the media player used to render audio and video elements added an internet shortcut (.URL file) to the media player dialog box.
- Fixed a bug in the "Use integrated input method support" feature. This bug caused for example the following incorrect behavior using the Japanese Hiragana input method: typing n, e, k, o, SPACE (to insert the Kanji for neko) three times in row, without pressing each time ENTER to commit the Kanji for "neko", inserted the Kanji for "neko" three times but with an "n" between each Kanji.
- When a node range was selected, in some cases, using "Edit|Copy as Text" caused XXE to fail with a NullPointerException.
- Command-line utility xxetool did not pick up the customizations done using "Options|Customize Configuration|Customize Document Conversion Stylesheets".
- When XXE is deployed using Java™ Web Start, bundling TTF font files and a FOP configuration file (e.g. fop.conf) pointing to these local TTF font files in a customization of the "Apache FOP 1.x XSL-FO processor plug-in" add-on caused the conversion to PDF to fail with the following error message: "FOP XSL-FO processor error: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: URI is not absolute".
- "Apache Batik image toolkit plug-in" add-on: fixed the following Batik 1.8 bug: BATIK-1090; Embedded SVG reports "Content is not allowed in prolog"; https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BATIK-1090.
Incompatibilities:
- All DocBook configurations: "Convert Document|Convert to Web Help" now generates Web Help containing XHTML 5.0 pages. This change was needed to support DocBook audio and video elements.
- All DITA configurations: "Convert Document|Convert to Web Help" now generates Web Help containing by default XHTML 5.0 pages. "Options|Customize Configuration|Customize Document Conversion Stylesheets" allows to select an alternate stylesheet generating Web Help containing XHTML 1.0 pages.
- When converting a DITA document to single-page or multi-page XHTML or to Web Help, SVG graphics are no longer automatically converted to PNG.
- Adobe Flash being now obsolete, replaced item "object(flash)" by "object(youtube)" in the menu displayed by the "Insert media object" button of the DITA Topic toolbar |
