[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] [XXE] XMLmind XML Editor V2.7 (long)
XMLmind XML Editor V2.7 can be downloaded from http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/download.shtml ====================== V2.7 (August 20, 2004) Enhancements: (see technical details below) * Most enhancements are related to the support of images: + In addition to GIF, JPEG and PNG which are natively supported by all Java[tm] applications, XXE supports a large number of image formats through the use of image toolkit plug-ins. The Batik plug-in for XXE adds the support of SVG graphics. The Jimi plug-in for XXE adds the support of many formats including TIFF and BMP. (TIFF support is native on Mac. BMP support is native with Java[tm] 1.5.) Standard Edition users: image toolkit plug-ins can only be used to render images on screen. They cannot be used in process commands to convert on the fly between different image formats. + If the image toolkit plug-ins provided by XMLmind are not sufficient, you can write your own image toolkit plug-ins in Java[tm]. But, if you are not a programmer, you can turn any command line utility which converts images to GIF, JPEG or PNG to a fully functional image toolkit plug-in in just 5 minutes. Examples of purely declarative, instant, image toolkit plug-ins are given for EPS, PDF (based on GhostScript's gs command line utility), TeX Math (based on TeX+dvips+GhostScript), PBM, PGM, PPM (based on netpbm's pnmtopng command line tool). + Images no longer need to be stored in external files. They can now be embedded in the XML document if the DTD/W3C XML Schema designer finds this more convenient. XXE supports embedded SVG graphics as well as embedded binary images (encoded in base64Binary, the W3C XML Schema standard data type). Moreover XXE has new facilities which makes it easy to add support for embedded images when you need to convert the XML documents to HTML, RTF, PostScript or PDF. (That is, with the new XXE facilities, having images embedded in the XML document does not make writing XSLT style sheets harder than it already is.) + XXE has a new advanced image viewport component which allows to render images on screen in a WYSIWYG fashion (this needs to be specified in the CSS style sheet). For example, this advanced image viewport is used to render DocBook imagedata element on screen exactly as described in "DocBook: The Definitive Guide". All this is showcased in two new demos: + XXE_install_dir/demo/docbook-image.xml is a demo for authors. It is a DocBook+SVG article showing how imagedata and embedded SVG graphics (imageobject/svg:svg) are rendered on screen. Conversion to HTML, to RTF (using the XFC plug-in, Professional Edition only) and to PostScript/PDF (using the XEP plug-in, Professional Edition only) works fine too. + XXE_install_dir/docs/configure/samples/im agedemo/sample.xml is a demo for external consultants and local gurus which requires the sample configuration found XXE_install_dir/docs/configure/samples/im agedemo/ to be properly installed. It shows how embedded images encoded in base64Binary are rendered on screen and how they can be converted to HTML, RTF, PostScript and PDF. * A new command line utility called convertdoc is now bundled with XXE. It allows to execute XXE process commands from the command line, exactly as if these process commands were executed from XXE. Just like XXE, the convertdoc command line utility scans directories for configurations and XML catalogs, loads image toolkit plug-ins, loads FO processor plug-ins, supports XInclude, etc. Note that convertdoc Standard Edition has exactly the same artificial restrictions than XXE Standard Edition: limited support of W3C XML Schemas, no support of FO processor except XEP Trial Edition, image toolkit plug-ins cannot be used to convert on the fly between different image formats, etc. * User request: it is now possible use a unique instance of XXE to open all your XML documents (for example, by double-clicking on their icons in the file ``explorer''). This option is not enabled by default. Use the Options dialog box, General tab to enable it. Linux users: this option also works fine when used from the command line (that is, "xxe mydoc.xml &"). * User request: it is now possible to change the base font size of XXE menus and dialog boxes. Use the Options dialog box, General tab to do this. Note that this orthogonal to changing the base font size used to display styled documents (Options dialog box, Style tab). Clarification: the font size used everywhere in XXE (GUI, CSS, etc) is expressed in ``Java[tm] points''. ``Java[tm] points'' are not the same as points used by the operating system and by non-Java applications. They are much smaller: 16 ``Java[tm] points'' are roughly equivalent to 12 real-world points on a 96DPI screen (1 real-world point = 1/72 inch). * User request: it is now possible to change the language used in XXE menus and dialog boxes; for example, force the use of English on a machine where the default locale is German. Use the Options dialog box, General tab to do this. * In the XXE status bar, at the right of the message area, you'll find a new button which can be used to display a dialog box containing last messages reported by XXE. These messages are sorted by category. One of the most useful category is "Command Execution" which contains the messages reported during the execution of the last command. Commands such as DocBook|Convert Document|Convert to PDF are really verbose, that's why this category is so useful. Previously, this dialog box was only accessible by right-clicking in the message area of the status bar. * Installation of XXE plug-ins has been slightly simplified. Plus a single archive containing the XFC, FOP, Batik and Jimi plug-ins for XXE is now available for download in the .tar.gz or in the .zip format. Technical details about the enhancements (for local gurus): * Enhancements related to the support of images are implemented using the following components: + New image-viewport() CSS pseudo-function, which implements an advanced image viewport. Simpler image() CSS pseudo-function is still supported. See XMLmind XML Editor - Support of Cascading Style Sheets (W3C CSS). + New commands setImage, extractImage, resizeSVG. See XMLmind XML Editor - Commands. + New process command child elements extract and convertImage. See XMLmind XML Editor - Commands. + New configuration element imageToolkit. See XMLmind XML Editor - Configuration and Deployment. * The XInclude elements generated by XXE to represent modular document now conform to the latest W3C candidate recommendation (13 April 2004). The main change is that fragment identifiers must not be used in the href attribute of an xi:include element. For example: <xi:include href="VATrates.html#germany_vat"/> must be specified as <xi:include href="VATrates.html" xpointer="ger many_vat"/>. Of course, all these technical details are transparent for the user. However, it is recommended to reopen modular documents created using previous versions of XXE and to save them back to disk using XXE V2.7. This will ensure that the modular documents created using XXE are interchangeable with other XInclude-aware applications. * Added support for CSS proprietary property collapsed-content-align. This property specifies how the collapsed-content image is to be horizontally aligned. * Added option [reopenIfNewer] to command XXE.open. This makes a macro such as: --------------------------------------------------------- <command name="editXMLSource"> <macro> <sequence> <command name="XXE.save" parameter="[ifNeeded]"/> <command name="run" parameter='emacs "%D"'/> <command name="XXE.open" parameter="[reopenIfNewer]"/> </sequence> </macro> </command> --------------------------------------------------------- really usable compared to previous version which used option [reopen]. * Upgraded the FOP FO processor plug-in to FOP 0.20.5. Note that this version is different from the stock FOP 0.20.5 found at http://xml.apache.org/fop/. It has been modified by XMLmind to compile with Batik 1.5.1. Therefore, despite substantial efforts from our part, we know that we have broken things in FOP (at least, conversion to PostScript when the FO document contains or references SVG graphics and strokeSVGText=false which is an option of the PDF renderer). * The DocBook-specific XSLT extensions written by Norman Walsh (i.e. docbook-xsl-saxon.jar) are now enabled in the DocBook XSL Stylesheets and in the Slides XSL Stylesheet. Bug fixes: * Removed odd behaviors when typed text (or pasted text) replaced the text selection. * Command include didn't work properly when the included document module was itself modular through the use of XIncludes. * It was not possible to create or modify on a WebDAV server, documents with filenames containing spaces and non-ASCII characters. Note that there are still problems with Apache mod_dav and non-ASCII characters because the Java[tm] runtime and mod_dav differ in the way non-ASCII characters should be encoded. Possible incompatibilities: * An author now needs to double-click on a image in order to display the dialog box which allows to change it. Previously, an author needed to right-click on the image to do the same thing. Note that now right-clicking on a embedded image (i.e. SVG or binary image encoded in base64Binary) displays a contextual Edit menu having additional entries such as "Save Image As" or "Resize SVG Graphics". * Plug-in archives downloaded from the XMLmind site must now be unzipped in C:\Document and Settings\user\xxe2\ (~/.xxe2/ on Unix) or in XXE_install_dir/. Previously, they had to be unzipped in C:\Document and Settings\user\xxe2\plugin\ (~/.xxe2/plugin/ on Unix) or in XXE_install_dir/plugin/. * The default value of new CSS property collapsed-content-align is auto, which means that the collapsed-content image must be horizontally aligned just like the normal content it represents. Previously, XXE behaved like if property collapsed-content-align was implicitly set to center. -- XMLmind XML Editor Information List xmleditor-announce@x... http://www.xmlmind.com/mailman/listinfo/xmleditor-announce
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