XML view upgrades?

[wbrisett]

We're just now starting down the path of upgrading our CCMS (Ixiasoft), and moving to their web platform. We know they are using the oXygen web tooling for authoring, the XML view is very simplistic, are there any plans to upgrade the web framework XML view to be a bit more full-featured to align more with standalone desktop oXygen?

[cristi_talau]

Hello,
While Web Author is designed for subject matter experts and technical writers without experience with XML markup, we also invest a little bit of energy in the text-page. Currently it only has syntax highlight and content completion for XML files that are validated with DTD.
In order to help us prioritise the work on the text page, I would be interested in your feedback about what features you miss the most from the text page of the Oxygen Desktop editor?

Best,
Cristian

[wbrisett]

One thing in particular that would be extremely helpful is automatically providing valid elements (which happens in author view and in both author and text views in the desktop version). I'm also not seeing automatic closing of elements when I type one in the XML editor. For example, in the desktop if I type <p> I get a closing </p> automatically. It's not until I start closing the element with < that I get the /p> closing part.

[mihaela]

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback.

We already have a feature request registered in our internal issues tracking system for closing the XML tags automatically and I have added your vote for it. We will update this thread when the feature will be available.

Regarding the valid elements request, can you please tell us what type of documents are you using? What type of schema do you use? We only provide syntax highlight and content completion for XML files that are validated with DTD, for the moment.

Best Regards,
Mihaela

[wbrisett]

We're using the web author as part of Ixiasoft's web CCMS, so these are DITA topics, so they do get validated.

[cristi_talau]

Hello,
Regarding content completion (the feature that presents valid elements), in Web Author you have to press Ctrl+Space to have them displayed. If you press Ctrl+Space do they show up?
Best,
Cristian

[wbrisett]

oh! Yes, it was the control space that I was missing. I can now see the element list when I do that.

Since you’re wanting feedback here's a few more things my colleagues mentioned to me.

1. Ability to have closing element change at the same time the opening element is changed. (Useful when changing elements ... like codeph to codeblock.)
2. Text position counter (very useful in codeblocks to align content).
3. Ability to format the content automatically (indentions).

If we think of others, I'll add to this list.

[mihaela]

Hello,
Thank you for your feedback! We have added all your requests to our internal issues tracking system and we will update this thread when the features will be available.

Also, we plan to automatically start the content completion in Text mode.
Thank you again! Any other feedback is appreciated.

Best Regards,
Mihaela