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Oxygen XML Editor Suite Version 25.1 Release

Press release from the issuing company

Syncro Soft, the developer of the Oxygen XML suite of products, is proud to announce the immediate availability of version 25.1 of its industry-leading XML suite of products: Oxygen XML Editor, Author, Developer, Web Author, Publishing Engine, WebHelp, PDF Chemistry, and Scripting, as well as version 3.0 of the Oxygen Feedback comment management platform.

Some of the highlights of this release include various productivity improvements for DITA authors and new possibilities for DITA publishers who produce either CSS-based PDF or WebHelp output. JSON schema designers can look forward to more functionality to help them in Design mode, as well as upgrades to some of the JSON tools, and support for editing JSON Lines documents. YAML developers will be happy to see that the YAML editing support was bolstered to a level similar to Oxygen's JSON support. Many of Oxygen's popular add-ons were updated with new options, visual improvements, performance enhancements, and ease-of-use features. The scripting community now has access to some ready-to-use GitHub project templates and GitHub actions that allow users to automate scripts and some of the existing scripts were improved, while new ones were added. This release also provides various important component updates, bug fixes, and security enhancements.

Oxygen XML Web Author, the cutting-edge web-based XML authoring tool, comes with even more improvements and updates. This release brings you updates for the comparison tool and image maps, new plugins are available for adding support for CALS tables in custom frameworks, rendering LaTeX equations, and providing client-side evaluation of XPath expressions. Various other enhancements were implemented as well.

One of the major additions in the latest version of Oxygen Feedback is the Content Indexing and Search feature, which enables you to utilize Oxygen Feedback as an external search engine for your published Oxygen WebHelp Responsive output.

What's new in Oxygen XML Editor 25.1

Oxygen XML Editor version 25.1 is a minor release of the industry-leading bundle of tools for content authors, developers, collaborators, and publishers. This release offers both enhancements to existing functionality and some brand new features that were requested by the community.

For DITA authors, when working with DITA-OT projects that define multiple output configurations (called contexts), it is easier to select the current context used to see how the DITA content looks like in that configuration using the re-designed interface. It facilitates the context selection with improved grouping and filtering options. Starting with DITA 1.3, it is possible to specify filters for a branch of a DITA map through a functionality called branch filtering. Oxygen's advanced DITA map validation and completeness check now factors in branch filtering. DITA 1.3 also introduced the concept of key scopes, enabling you to specify different sets of key definitions for different map branches. Oxygen's DITA Reusable Components view has a new filtering option to show keys with the closest relative key scope to the current editing location, and key references are validated taking the key scope into account. The DITA Map Metrics Report that contains useful statistics for the current DITA map was redesigned to allow easier navigation to its various categories. Performance was improved when editing large DITA maps and the Change or remove profiling attribute value refactoring action also updates DITAVAL filter files.

DITA publishers who produce CSS-based PDF output have the possibility of displaying line numbers or visual markers for whitespace characters in code blocks, making code snippets easier to read in the output. The error reporting was improved when publishing DITA-OT Project files. For example, the transformation error messages displayed in the Results pane contain the ID of the deliverable. You can also control the behavior of footnotes using a new transformation parameter that when set to yes, causes footnotes that are referenced multiple times throughout a publication to be cloned and placed at the bottom of the page for each occurrence instead of subsequent references pointing back to the original footnote. For WebHelp publishers, this release added new parameters for disabling the generation of index terms and excluding topic IDs from context-sensitive help, a new extension point can also be used to help you fine-tune the XSLT transformation that generates the mapping for context-sensitive help, and the JQuery library that comes bundled with WebHelp is accessible in the browser's global context enabling developers to use it.

The innovative JSON Schema Design mode received further enhancements. A new action was added to flatten the entire hierarchy of JSON schemas, the Extract Definition type actions work on multiple selections of components, and the functionality of search actions was extended to enable them to be used on the root schema component. The XSD to JSON Schema conversion tool and the JSON Schema Documentation Generator were both upgraded to fix various issues and enhance performance. Also, basic editing support was added for JSON Lines documents, and JSON property names are now displayed after ending brackets to make the code more readable when editing JSON documents in Text mode.

YAML developers have access to an Outline view that displays the list of all the components of the document in a hierarchical (tree-like) representation and can be used to navigate to a specific part, or to move or delete components. Content completion assistance was implemented to help you edit YAML documents by offering proposals for inserting YAML structures that are valid at the current editing location. Various actions (e.g. Toggle Line Comments, Copy JSON Pointer, and Copy XPath) were also implemented to bring the YAML editing support to a level similar to Oxygen's JSON support.

For XSLT and XQuery users, a new version of the Saxon XSLT and XQuery Transformer add-on is now available for Saxon 12 and the Saxon 11 version of the add-on was also updated to incorporate Saxon 11.5, the latest maintenance release of the Saxon 11 engine. Also, the output of XQuery Trace functions (used in XML refactoring actions for debugging purposes) is presented in the Results view to make the information more readily available.

Many of the most popular add-ons received updates and some interesting new add-ons were implemented. The Git Client add-on offers new options, visual improvements, performance enhancements, and ease-of-use features. Various performance, layout, and rendering improvements were implemented for both the JSON Schema and OpenAPI Documentation Generator tools, and the Batch Documents Converter and Terminology Checker add-ons also received various updates to bolster their functionality. A new Live Tutorials add-on is available to help you create tutorials for learning various editing functions for a certain vocabulary. This add-on also comes bundled with some small tutorials that teach you how to do various DITA editing tasks. Another new add-on is available to help you manage Fluenta DITA translation projects.

Other improvements include basic editing support and syntax highlights for Dockerfile documents, relative references in Framework Extension Script files are automatically resolved, certain XML refactoring operations process faster, and as usual, this release includes various important component updates, bug fixes, and security enhancements.

For more information, see: https://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/whats_new.html 

What's new in Oxygen XML Scripting 25.1

Oxygen XML Scripting version 25.1 offers updates and improvements for some of the scripts that are available to provide a variety of functions that can be scheduled or triggered using a command-line tool on Windows, Linux, or macOS.

The scripting community now has access to some ready-to-use GitHub project templates and GitHub actions that allow users to automate scripts that will be triggered every time you push changes to your repository. For example, there are templates that execute validation and transformation operations, while other templates allow you to compare directories or generate XSD/XSL/WSDL Documentation. The Validation script also received various improvements. For example, framework validation scenarios are automatically detected for OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON-LD documents. New scripts were added for generating JSON Schema or OpenAPI Documentation.

For more information, see: https://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_scripting/whats_new.html 

What's new in Oxygen XML Web Author 25.1

Version 25.1.0 of Oxygen XML Web Author is a minor release for the innovative web-based XML authoring tool. This release brings you improvements for the comparison tool and image maps, new plugins are available for adding support for CALS tables in custom frameworks, rendering LaTeX equations, and providing client-side evaluation of XPath expressions, while various other enhancements also were implemented.

This latest version includes several notable improvements. One of the main areas of focus was on enhancing stability and performance for non-Latin language input method editors (IME). The Web Author's file comparison tool has also been improved with new parameters and better visual highlighting of surround-type edits. New actions that move selected block elements have been introduced to help improve productivity. Image maps now support images referenced using keys, and several new open-source plugins are available, including one for adding support for CALS tables in custom frameworks, one for rendering LaTeX equations, and another for evaluating XPath expressions client-side. This version also includes a range of other productivity improvements, component updates, bug fixes, and security enhancements.

For more information, see: https://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_web_author/whats_new.html 

Version 3.0 of Oxygen Feedback offers exciting new enhancements for the modern comment management platform that provides a simple and efficient way for your community to interact with and offer feedback about your content.

Some of the most significant additions for this version include the new search functionality that allows you to use Oxygen Feedback as an external search engine for your published Oxygen WebHelp Responsive output. The benefit of this functionality is the efficiency of the search process, which is performed on a pre-built index of the HTML content. Oxygen Feedback supports a vast list of languages to be used in the indexing process.

The page ratings component was enhanced to provide the possibility of displaying a survey when a user gives a negative rating for a page. The page ratings statistics page in the administration interface now has columns for both positive and negative votes, and shows the negative survey messages, which are also sent to admins in daily email notifications. You also have the ability to choose whether to display like/dislike icons instead of text responses (e.g. Yes and No) for the page ratings component.

Both Cloud and Enterprise editions also include other productivity improvements, bug fixes, and customization options.

For more information about the Oxygen Feedback Cloud edition, see: https://www.oxygenxml.com/oxygen_feedback_cloud/whats_new.html

For more information about the Oxygen Feedback Enterprise edition, see: https://www.oxygenxml.com/oxygen_feedback_enterprise/whats_new.html 

What's new in Oxygen Publishing Engine 25.1

Oxygen Publishing Engine offers the same publishing functionality from Oxygen XML Editor to be used for automation and continuous integration/delivery (CI/CD) tasks. Version 25.1 includes the improvements and additions implemented in Oxygen XML WebHelp and Oxygen PDF Chemistry.

For Oxygen XML WebHelp publishers, this release added a new parameter for excluding topic IDs from context-sensitive help mappings, a new parameter to disable the generation of index terms, a new extension point to help you insert custom XSLT code to modify the XSLT transformation that generates the mapping for context-sensitive help, and the JQuery library that comes bundled with WebHelp is accessible in the browser's global context enabling developers to use it.

Starting with version 25.1 of Oxygen PDF Chemistry, you have the ability to embed videos in your PDF output. It is possible to display line numbers or markers for whitespace characters in code blocks to make your code snippets easier to read. You can also control the behavior of footnotes using a new transformation parameter that when set to yes, causes footnotes that are referenced multiple times throughout a publication to be cloned and placed at the bottom of the page for each occurrence, instead of subsequent references pointing back to the original footnote.

This release also includes various bug fixes and security enhancements.

For more information, see: https://www.oxygenxml.com/publishing_engine/whats_new.html