Hello everyone,

We are incredibly proud to announce the immediate availability of version 25 of the industry-leading XML suite of products: Oxygen XML Editor, Author, Developer, Web Author, Publishing Engine, WebHelp, PDF Chemistry, and Oxygen XML Scripting!

This release provides a platform to work both with XML and XML-related resources by further extending its support to other languages such as JSON and YAML, and being able to treat some file types (Word, Excel, OpenAPI, HTML, Markdown, and others) as DITA-compatible resources and thus reference and use them from DITA maps, similar to how DITA XML topics are referenced and used. Furthermore, users now have the ability to generate Google Structured Data in WebHelp output, and for PDF publishers this version includes support for a variety of useful new CSS properties to customize the CSS-based PDF output.

The JSON feature was improved by adding support for editing and validating using the latest JSON Schema version. The visual JSON Schema diagram was also updated and comes with new search and refactoring actions.

For this release, we also focused our efforts to bring lots of improvements to some of the popular add-ons, such as the Git Client, Batch Documents Converter, and Terminology Checker. A new command-line script can be used to validate files or directories, and as usual, version 25 includes new API entry points, various bug fixes, and component updates.

Oxygen XML Web Author, the cutting-edge web-based XML authoring tool, now features even more improvements and updates. This major release offers enhancements to the general user interface, new DITA authoring features, more customization possibilities, refinements to concurrent editing sessions, and performance tweaks.

=============================================================================

Oxygen XML Editor version 25.0 provides numerous new features, updates, and improvements that focus on productivity, performance, efficiency, advanced customization, and simplicity.

This major release introduces a lot of productivity enhancements for DITA authors and publishers. DITA maps are now automatically saved whenever a modification is made in the DITA Maps Manager, various improvements were added to make referenced DITA-compatible resources (Word, Excel, OpenAPI, HTML, Markdown) be treated similar to DITA resources when inserting references, validating DITA maps, or publishing content. Referenced content (topic or map references within DITA maps or content references in topics) can be expanded on demand in the Author visual editing mode, thus increasing the performance when opening files with many references, a new toolbar button in the DITA Maps Manager generates a DITA Metrics report with useful information about the current map, profiling attribute groups can now be defined in a subject scheme map, and new inline actions are available for inserting topic references in DITA maps, setting the note type, and setting the language for code blocks in DITA topics. A button was added for each deliverable in DITA-OT Project files to make it easy to publish that deliverable individually, while a publish button was also added at the top of the document to publish all deliverables specified in the DITA-OT project file. You now have the ability to generate Google Structured Data in WebHelp output, there is also a new Questions and Answers topic type that can be used during the publishing phase for creating the Google Structured Data in the output, and a new action makes it possible to insert an intent question within a DITA topic.

Many of the JSON features and tools were updated to support the latest JSON schema version (2020-12). This includes validating JSON schemas according to the 2020-12 specification, validating JSON or YAML documents against a 2020-12 schema, content completion proposals were updated, new components were added in the Palette view, and you can convert older JSON schemas to the latest version. The JSON Schema Documentation Generator, JSON Instance Generator, and JSON Schema Generator tools were also updated to support the 2022-12 schema version. New search and refactoring actions were also integrated into the JSON Schema Design mode, and containers are now automatically created when dragging components from the Palette view to the JSON Schema Design editor.

The OpenAPI standard is becoming more and more popular and our developers implemented various features and tools to support these types of documents. New document templates are available, you can edit OpenAPI documents in Text or Author mode taking advantage of automatic validation and content completion proposals, while the OpenAPI Documentation Generator and OpenAPI Tester tools were also improved. Additionally, support was also included for editing AsyncAPI, JSON-LD, and OpenAPI test scenario documents.

The built-in Saxon XSLT/XQuery processor was updated to the latest version, 11.4. It brings new functionality and support for new extension functions, as well as other features for XSLT and XQuery transformations and debugging. Other improvements include validation and transformation support for XSLT 4.0 documents, and content completion for XSLT 4.0 elements, attributes, and XPath 4.0 functions.

Add-ons were another focus of this release, with some of the most popular ones receiving lots of updates. Validation features were added in the Git Client, enabling automatic validation of files before performing the commit or push actions. The Batch Documents Converter now has an option for converting OpenAPI specification files encoded in JSON or YAML formats into DITA documents and many of the other types of conversions received various improvements. The Terminology Checker add-on now has the ability to control on which elements a rule is applied using simple XPath expressions, the users can now specify the phase (editing/validation/always) in which incorrect terms are detected, and it is possible for Oxygen add-on to contribute terminology files to be used by the Terminology Checker.

Other features and improvements include editing support and syntax highlighting for PowerShell files, performance was improved for the XPath in Files feature, shortcuts were added for controlling indentation in code blocks, and as usual, this release includes new API entry points, various bug fixes, and component updates.

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

=============================================================================

Oxygen XML Scripting version 25.0 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.

This release added a new Validate Command Line Script that can be used for validating files or directories and generating reports in several formats (text, XML, JSON, or an HTML visual format). Also, the Batch Converter script now includes the option to convert multiple documents from OpenAPI to DITA.

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

=============================================================================

Oxygen Publishing Engine version 25.0 encompasses the improvements and additions implemented in Oxygen XML WebHelp and Oxygen PDF Chemistry. This latest release offers a variety of new customization possibilities, transformation parameters, properties, component updates, and bug fixes for both WebHelp and PDF publishers.

For Oxygen XML WebHelp publishers, this release added the ability to generate Google Structured Data in the output and to control the search support. New transformation parameters were included to specify a custom search engine, to change the default search engine, or to replace the main page with a custom page. Customization possibilities were added for displaying a custom title in the search results page or for implementing custom search filters.

Some of the most interesting improvements offered with the latest version of Oxygen PDF Chemistry include support for a variety of new CSS properties to help users control how page, column, or region breaks behave, to force or avoid line breaks at hyphens, to omit the header or footer from tables when a page break occurs, or to display watermark images in the foreground. Also, new transformation parameters can be used to make documents archive-able (PDF/A compliant) or to filter the glossary, and it is now possible to define exception elements for hyphenation dictionaries.

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

=============================================================================

Version 25.0.0 of Oxygen XML Web Author continues to bolster the innovative web-based XML authoring tool with more enhancements and additions. This major release offers improvements to the general user interface, new DITA authoring features, more customization possibilities, refinements to concurrent editing sessions, performance tweaks, as well as various bug fixes and component updates.

For awhile now, the DITA support has benefited from an image map editor and that was also extended to define and edit image maps for XHTML documents, and in general, the image map support can now be easily added for any other XML vocabulary.

When editing online, it is possible to lose the connection to the server. Once the connection is restored, the concurrent editing support now resumes seamlessly.

Inserting DITA new topics and topic references in DITA maps is made easier by a new CSS style that provides inline actions to insert topic references when editing DITA map documents in the visual editor.

Other interesting enhancements added in this version of Web Author include actions to select an element, its content, or its parent, actions to insert links were added to the floating toolbar, easier methods for controlling indentation and setting the syntax highlight language in code blocks, and the Outline pane is now also available for DITA maps.

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

=============================================================================

DITA-OT Day 2022

On the 13th of November, 2022, Oxygen XML Editor organizes the 7th edition of the DITA-OT Day conference in Rotterdam, Netherlands, a full day in-person event dedicated to the DITA Open Toolkit project, which is the reference DITA implementation and the core of almost all DITA-based publishing solutions, Oxygen included.

Find out more details and registration information at https://www.oxygenxml.com/events/2022/dita-ot_day.html

=============================================================================

We hope you will enjoy our latest release of the Oxygen XML suite of products!
As always, thank you for your support and don't forget that feedback is welcome!

Best regards,
Alin

-- 
Alin Belu
Oxygen XML Editor