Hi Alan,

Thank you for your reply. I fully agree with what you wrote about FM's Structure View. An excellent tool.

It would be great if oXygen could enhance its Outline View and make it work in a similar way. I am especially missing the following features:

• Allow users to place the cursor between tags, or at the beginning/end of the element contents, and indicate the position
  
• Display attributes: Toggle between all/all with a value/none (no need to waste room on the screen for a separate Attributes window)
  
• Expand/collapse complete tree of elements or attributes in one go (Shift-click)
• Element content should not be repeated for empty wrapping elements, this is confusing (show it only once)
  For exmaple, for <li><p>Text..., the "Text" is shown both for <li> and <p>. It should only be shown for <p>.

Can I add this as feature request?

I have now switched to the oXygen Users Mailing List and will post any further oXygen-related issues there.

Regards,

Frank

Chiming in a bit late here. Longtime structured FrameMaker and oXygen user...

Frank mentions the FrameMaker structure view. IMO, this is the best and most distinctive part of the FrameMaker structured authoring interface. Easy access to any part of the document. Expand/collapse at any level of the document hierarchy; locally or globally (e.g. expand/collapse "this" section; expand/collapse all sections). Full navigation capabilities. Visual feedback (and shortcut control) over cursor location -- beginning, middle, or end of an element. Configurable and interactive attribute display.

While most XML editors provide some sort of outline view, I've never seen one as full-featured and useful as the FrameMaker structure view.

I occasionally use the oXygen Outline View for quick navigation in larger XML documents. And the "folding" feature in the edit window to expand/collapse content. But these don't fully replace what one can do with the FrameMaker structure view.

I think you will find that oXygen provides more and different features than Structured FrameMaker, many of which you will come to appreciate. I suggest (as you are doing) learning how to be most productive with the oXygen features and workflow. And be prepared to miss the FrameMaker structure view. 🙁

-Alan

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Alan Houser
Group Wellesley, Inc.
Consultant and Trainer, Technical Publishing
arh on Twitter
412-450-0532

On Dec 8, 2022, at 10:37 AM, Frank Dissinger <frank.dissinger@cgs-oris.com> wrote:

Thank you,

Chris
Radu
Stefan
Thomas
Yves

for your replies, this valuable information and for offering me your help.

I have already made some initial progress. I have successfully created a custom framework with my own CSS file and are getting my topic editor window panel look more and more the way I like (using the 'print-ready' display style).

I'll try to dig a bit deeper into this matter and will collect the questions and issues as I get on with this. I'll then come back to you.

Best regards,

Frank

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Am 06.12.2022 um 17:42 schrieb Frank Dissinger:

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

-- 

Frank Dissinger

Documentation Manager

....................................................................

CGS Publishing Technologies International GmbH

Email frank.dissinger@cgs-oris.com | Web www.cgs-oris.com

Address Kettelerstr. 24 | D-63512 Hainburg | Germany

Phone +49 6182 9626-27 | Fax +49 6182 9626-99

Commercial register Offenbach, HRB no. 21495

Managing directors Bernd Rückert, Christoph Thommessen

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Frank Dissinger

Documentation Manager

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CGS Publishing Technologies International GmbH

Email frank.dissinger@cgs-oris.com | Web www.cgs-oris.com

Address Kettelerstr. 24 | D-63512 Hainburg | Germany

Phone +49 6182 9626-27 | Fax +49 6182 9626-99

Commercial register Offenbach, HRB no. 21495

Managing directors Bernd Rückert, Christoph Thommessen