Hi Radu,

Thank you also for this reply (on the DITA Users List).

Regards,

Frank

Hi Frank,

Here are some answers to your remarks, if you need more help about how Oxygen works you can contact us directly:

• It seems that a DITA map loads all the referenced submaps and displays all of these maps in a single window panel (as if this was a single file). In FM I see only the references and open the submaps as separate files by double-clicking on them.

In Oxygen a DITA Map can be opened both in the DITA Maps Manager view and in the main editing area where it can be edited in either the Author or the Text editing modes.

I will assume you are referring to opening a DITA Map in the Author visual editing mode. In the Oxygen Preferences->"DITA / Maps" page you have a checkbox named "Expand references to other maps when opening a map in the Author mode".

• I feel lost in these maps. There are lots of big fonts, frames, colored backgrounds, icons... Can I customize the appearance? For example, by defining CSS-like styles for the DITA elements displayed on the screen?

Yes, sure. The visual editing is CSS based. We have a CSS inspector view which can be used to debug what CSS styles apply to render a certain element in a certain way:

https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/25.0/ug-editor/topics/author-css-inspector-view.html

and you can contribute your own CSS for customizing the editing aspects:

https://blog.oxygenxml.com/topics/customizeDITACSS.html

• The Outline view is a bit similar to FM's Structure View. But I am used to setting the cursor into the Structure View to precisely define the point where to insert an element. This does not work in oXygen.

Different applications have different features. Oxygen has a tooltip window showing the context which appears when moving the caret in the content, it also has various tags display modes which may be useful to properly place the cursor. Maybe you can use those instead of the Outline.

• I'd like to see text and images without any tags in one window panel and the DITA structure with elements and attributes in a separate panel. I know I can switch off tags and use the Outline view, but I am not sure if this really gives me full control over everything...
  

The Oxygen Outline is mostly intended to show the structure of the content and allow you to select elements.

• How does oXygen visualize conditionalized content (included/excluded via a ditaval file)?

Here's a link to the Oxygen user guide:

https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/25.0/ug-editor/topics/dita-profiling-conditional-text.html

with some videos/webinars referenced at the end.

• Can I define a fixed page size in oXygen? I'd like to set a page width (height is not important) to make sure that images fit on the page and that table columns are not too narrow (in PDF deliverables). Setting an image resolution is also important.

By default Oxygen shows a US-letter outline around an edited DITA topic. But this does not impose maximum width constraints, in a way in this regard Oxygen behaves more like a web browser, not like a PDF renderer.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Radu

Radu Coravu
Oxygen XML Editor

On 12/6/22 18:42, Frank Dissinger wrote:

Hi all,

Are there any passionate long-term structured FrameMaker users who have changed to oXygen as a DITA editor? Has anybody tried to set up the oXygen authoring environment as close as possible to FrameMaker's WYSIWYG view? Or at least in a way that makes the switch as painless as possible for a FrameMaker user?

I've been using FrameMaker V11+DITA-FMx as a DITA editor for many years -- until recently also as a PDF transformation engine, which I have now replaced with MiramoPDF. I have used oXygen for a few years only and mostly as a transformation engine. With FM I am stuck with an old DITA implementation and the DITA-FMx plug-in is not developed any further. This is why I would like to use oXygen as a DITA editor instead. But I find it very hard to make the switch: The way DITA maps, topics, tags, structures... are presented is so different and I haven't the time to learn oXygen properly and in full detail. It's such a powerful tool with tons of features. So I thought there may be someone who can help me getting started -- at least with setting up the user interface and authoring environment.

A few examples of things I am struggling with right away when I look at how oXygen presents my DITA files:

• It seems that a DITA map loads all the referenced submaps and displays all of these maps in a single window panel (as if this was a single file). In FM I see only the references and open the submaps as separate files by double-clicking on them.
• I feel lost in these maps. There are lots of big fonts, frames, colored backgrounds, icons... Can I customize the appearance? For example, by defining CSS-like styles for the DITA elements displayed on the screen?
• The Outline view is a bit similar to FM's Structure View. But I am used to setting the cursor into the Structure View to precisely define the point where to insert an element. This does not work in oXygen.
• I'd like to see text and images without any tags in one window panel and the DITA structure with elements and attributes in a separate panel. I know I can switch off tags and use the Outline view, but I am not sure if this really gives me full control over everything...
  
• How does oXygen visualize conditionalized content (included/excluded via a ditaval file)?
• Can I define a fixed page size in oXygen? I'd like to set a page width (height is not important) to make sure that images fit on the page and that table columns are not too narrow (in PDF deliverables). Setting an image resolution is also important.
• ...
  

Regards,

Frank

_._,_

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