XMetaL® Author Enterprise 11.0 Release Notes

Contents

Introduction

XMetaL Author is the leading authoring application for organizations using any XML document type, including the most complete support for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, or DITA. XMetaL Author also helps you maximize content reuse through tight integration with content repositories, and address advanced publishing requirements with an extensible publishing framework.

With this version, XMetaL Author has official DITA 1.3 support, 64-bit native support, a new and improved Map Editor, DITA Open Toolkit 2.2.1 update, improved table support, and many customer-reported bug fixes. For a complete list of new features, see New features.

New features

DITA 1.3 official support

With the ratification by OASIS of the DITA 1.3 specification, this release of XMetaL Author Enterprise now has DITA 1.3 authoring support enabled by default. As part of this new official DITA standard, we have made extensive revisions to the keyref-related features in order to support scoped-keys and branch filtering. XMetaL has extensive support for the scoped-keys feature along with all the new 1.3 domains and elements.

Please note that use of only DITA 1.2 and earlier features requires switching the DITA version preference via the DITA Options... menu item in the Tools menu. By default this switch is set to "1.3".

Conformance Statement: XMetaL Author Enterprise 11 conforms to the DITA 1.3 specification as expressed in the "Statement of Use" filed with the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. Features of DITA 1.3 implemented by XMetaL are listed in the Statement of Use, which is archived here: https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201508/msg00155.html.

64-bit Native Support

XMetaL Author is now available as a 64-bit native application allowing you to access memory beyond 4GB. The look & feel of the application is exactly the same as its 32-bit counterpart. Separate installers are provided for 64-bit and 32-bit options but one only can be installed at any given time. XML files created with either application will be interoperable provided that the total file size is under 4GB.

New and improved Map Editor

The Map Editor feature has been totally overhauled so most of the editing experience can remain within the Map Editor UI. Other improvements include unlimited undo/redo support, cut/copy/paste support, insert before/after operations, optional tags view, an embedded attribute inspector, support for new DITA 1.3 elements like <ditavalref>, and much much more.

For those who still need to use the old Map Editor feature, there is an option to switch back. Simply check the "Use classic Map Editor" option on Map Editor tab of the DITA Options preferences dialog.

DITA Open Toolkit Release 2.2.1

The DITA Open Toolkit (DOTK) v2.2.1 release, which has some support for DITA 1.3 and numerous bug fixes (over DOTK v2.0), is integrated with this software release and enabled by default. The software also includes the DITA OT 2.0 release for customers still on DITA 1.2 or requiring the previous DOTK for output purposes.

Please review the install-readme for details on how to switch between DOTK versions.

Advanced table editing features for custom table models

Previously XMetaL had hard-coded the element type names for HTML and CALS tables to provide an advanced table-editing experience for these models. Now XMetaL's advanced table-editing features can be enabled for your custom table model via a "treat as table" rule setup in the CTM file. Setting up such a configuration will enable the built-in operations available on the Table and Table Advanced toolbars, as well as the ability to make table cell and table markup selections which permit other advanced operations like multiple row cut/copy/paste.

For DITA 1.3 users, all table types have already been configured as advanced table types. This includes simpletable, reltable, and all of the other specialized table types that are defined in the OASIS DITA 1.3 specification.

Third-party components

This version of XMetaL Author Enterprise embeds the following third-party components, used for generating output from XML content (publishing):
  • DITA Open Toolkit Release 2.2.1. This version of XMetaL Author Enterprise has been tested with the DITA Open Toolkit version 2.2.1. Please refer to the 3rd party software's website for more details: http://www.dita-ot.org/2.2/release-notes/index.html
  • DITA Open Toolkit Release 2.0. This version of XMetaL Author Enterprise has been tested with the DITA Open Toolkit version 2.0. Please refer to the 3rd party software's website for more details: http://www.dita-ot.org/2.0/readme/changes/rel2.0.html
  • RenderX XEP 4.18.  Please see the "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\SoftQuad\XMetaL\Shared\renderx\doc\WhatsNew.txt" for more information about RenderX.

Bug fixes and minor enhancements

XMetaL Author Enterprise 11.0

Feature Description
API WritePermittedContainer API failing when used inside ReadOnlyContainer node.
Configuration File Save and Save As dialogs don't respect file extension settings from Tools.Options dialog for new documents.
Conref support Allow referenced content to be imported in-place when detaching a conref as single action.
Documentation Shortcut keys documented for switching between documents was wrong since the UI for the application was updated in 8.0.
Editing Rendering is wrong and confusing after deleting part of nested tracked changes.
Editing Parameter entity in internal subset is dropped.
Editing Pasting partial element causes a crash or the clipboard locks up.
Editing Typing <Enter> deletes element to the left of insertion point.
Key support When two keyscopes have the same name, the key-based reference to the key under the 2nd keyscope is not resolved.
Key support If a key is defined within the Insert Web Link dialog and the <xref> refers to a key, the Open Referenced File action does not open the external web site.
Refresh References Empty <linktext> is not updated when updating references.
Refresh References Element with @conaction specified should not be part of refresh reference processing.
Saving documents Entity reference removed from internal subset after saving.
Table editing Follow CALS table spec for @valign attribute on row, thead, tbody, tfoot elements.
Table editing Adding topicmeta to a reltable causes reltable to stop rendering as a table.
Table editing Deleting table column does not mark document as dirty (modified/changed).

XMetaL Author Enterprise 10.0

Feature Description
API Selection.IsMultiCellSelection property returns true if multi-cell table selection.
API Selection.Cells property returns DOMNodeList for multi-cell table selections.
API CanElement.DisplayName property returns string of the nice name configured for an element via CTM file.
Architecture Multiple xmetal.exe processes are present after checkout from Documentum Webtop.
Architecture "Unable to activate print component" error message occurs when running on terminal server.
BiDi authoring Typing a <Backspace> while both "Enable bi-direction text support" and "Check spelling while typing" are enabled crashes.
Configuration Crash occurs when auto-save option is enabled with a low change count.
Conref support Modifying @conref's target that is under XMetaL-connector control would append new fragment to the old fragment instead of replacing the old fragment portion of the URI.
Conref support Tooltip of attributes for resolved conref target not merged as per OASIS DITA 1.2 specification section 2.1.3.5.
DITA authoring Inserting reltable with source/target choice yields custom and vica versa.
DITA authoring Shortcut element needs styling, should be underlined.
DITA authoring After inserting column into DITA simpletable, insertion-point/selection is set into the last column of table.
Editing Deleting a collapsed tag removes root element instead.
Editing Sorting a DITA <dl> element causes a crash.
Editing Popup element list does not use the DisplayName as configured in the CTM file.
Editing Typing <Esc> would not abort the current Attribute Inspector edits and instead would commit those edits into the document.
Map Editor Menu text in Map Editor can appear tiny while rest of editor is OK.
Map Editor Setting navtitle in Map Editor results in invalid markup and topicmeta inserted in wrong position.
Map Editor Map Editor inserts @id attribute on root element even when auto-id preference is off.
Output DITA content managed in Documentum always fails to generate output with the DOTK 2.0. The validation stage of output generation, which defaults to always run unlike the DOTK 1.8 which defaults to no run, considers all the dctm: attributes as invalid because they are not declared in the DOTK copy of the DITA DTD files. Change the DOTK 2.0 default to not run the validation stage.
Output All fonts in PDF output are Helvetica, no Courier (monospace).
Output XMetaL Enhanced PDF via RenderX deliverable outputs wrong font.
Output Single HTML File deliverable should support HDF, HDR and FTR parameters like Multiple HTML files.
Output WebHelp output's table-of-contents is broken whenever a topic title contains < or >.
Refresh References Closing a DITA topic after refreshing references prompts to save file even though no edits were made to the DITA topic.
Refresh References F11 does not find broken links when there is PCDATA between <xref> tags.
Spell checking Canadian English spell check should accept "program" and "programs" as correct.
Spell checking French spell check should treat "aujour'dui" as one word and correctly spelled.
Spell checking "Resume" function starts from beginning if edits occur inbetween which is not the same behavior as it was in version 4.0.
Table editing Closing a document while the Merge Cells dialog is open causes a crash.
Table editing Splitting table that contains multiple footer rows crashes.
Table editing Splitting an HTML table that does not have <tbody> crashes.
Table editing Multi-level sort in table does not work as expected.
UI Some accelerator keys in various dialogs don't work.
UI Some accelerator keys in the Table menu are repeated and don't work.
UI Common shortcuts like Ctrl+V to paste and Delete key are not working in dialogs.
UI XMetaL Form Toolkit (XFT) dialogs display poorly on high DPI monitors.
UI Toolbar auto-layout would dock one toolbar per row and is inefficient. Now toolbar auto-layout will dock multiple custom DTD-specific toolbars per row upon first-time launching the software or after resetting the workspace.

XMetaL Author Enterprise 9.0

Feature Description
API Custom global menu button caption is lost after opening a document.
API Hiding Desktop tab via startup script crashes.
API Custom global toolbar button's tooltip text is not displaying after opening a document.
API Add API for joining tables.
API Add API for splitting tables.
CSS support Support CSS properties - border-top, border-bottom, border-right, border-left.
Configuration Empty.gif (blue diamond) no longer loaded by default; must use INI setting.
DITA authoring Tools->Dita Options cannot be opened when ActiveDocument is read-only.
Editing Undoing drag'n'drop or cut/copy and paste actions required doing Undo twice.
Map Editor Conref'd titles not visible in Map Editor.
Output PDF2 / PDF3 output should support <navtitle> element as per DITA 1.2.
Output Add fix to Webhelp output CSS file to support Chrome and Safari.
Table editing Inserting element into THEAD in custom CALS table model, then undoing, results in application crash.
Table editing Insert Rows duplicates ID value in DITA.
Table editing Add menu items for joining tables.
Table editing Add menu items for splitting tables.
Validation Validator complains about comment inside empty element, does not allow insertion either.

XMetaL Author Enterprise 8.0 Service Pack 1

Feature Description
API Application.DisableToolbarContextMenu() did not disable the toolbars context menu.
API DITA specialization extender override for OnSpecializeCommandBars method not called.
Connector Error message displayed if Open Referenced File attempted on external html resource and DITA topic is under control of a XMetaL connector.
Cross-file operation Default file extensions for cross-file operations are not all processed.
Documentation install-readme.html contained obsolete information for silent installing.
Find in Files Some acceleration keys do not work in the 'Find in Files' dialog.
Find in Files Operation across folder (versus ditamap) only works on XML files.
Find in Files An exception error was displayed when Find in Files progress window was closed by clicking the close window button (i.e. 'X').
Map Editor Fixes script error in MapEditor when switching to XML view and map has UTF-16 encoding declaration.
Map Editor Closing a ditamap with unsaved changes resulted in a script error.
Refresh References If Reference Checking panel was visible prior to closing down XMetaL, the application would crash.
Refresh References References not refreshing when configured to use DITA 1.1 DTDs.
Replace across Files Replace action does not invoke checkout action beforehand.
Replace across Files Replace action with Paste as Strict configuration causes unwanted RLX files to be generated. XMXMLControl.dll is not UAC-savvy.
Result window Items are lost after checking or unchecking (IE10 only).
Spell checking Right-click spell checking menu item suggestions always disabled.
Spell checking across Files Improved overall performance by caching certain working variables and using non-live DOM nodes list.
Validation External parameter entity resolving to wrong location of master DTD instead of parent file.
Obsolete hotfixes in XMetaL Author Enterprise 8.0 SP1 The following hot fixes are made obsolete with the installation of 8.0 SP1 and should no longer be used:
  • xmee_80_20130408.mcr
  • xmee_80_20130416.mcr
  • xmee_80_20130418.mcr
  • xmee_80_20130423.mcr
These files were provided to a select number clients and would have been installed on top of a standard installation of XMetaL Author Enterprise 8.0 by you or your organization. If you installed any of these hot fixes, one or more of the files listed above will be in the following folder: <XMetaL Installation Path>\Author\Startup\ To "uninstall" these hot fixes, simply delete the file(s).

XMetaL Author Enterprise 8.0

Feature Description
Configuration DITA Configuration: Turn OFF Pretty-Printing macro not working.
Editing Adding title element to reltable breaks formatting in Tags On / Normal views.
Editing Editing Status bar text summary of DITA conditions not displayed.
Editing Inserting row(s) into a reltable (DITA) takes longer than expected.
Editing Double clicking on <xref> without @scope attribute should prompt for type of xref
Map Editor Map Editor does not pull in conref'd content from a topic's title element.
Opening documents Crash occurs when opening file(s) with many large PNG images.
Output Auto-insertion of empty <linktext> element inside <link> in <related-links> breaks output.
Output WebHelp does not follow and expand conref items from titles into ToC, and @locktitle is also ignored.
Saving documents @display attribute is removed from all DITA docs when saved to file.
Validation Incorrect XSD validation when "" (empty string) is allowed as enumerated attribute value.

XMetaL Author Enterprise 7.0

Feature Description
CALS table model support Inserting a <table> using Element List leaves out required @cols for <tgroup>.
CALS table model support Modified CALS table model triggers invalid <spanspec> insertion.
Change Tracking Custom processing instructions are deleted or altered instead of integrating them into a Change Tracking PI.
Conref support Conref domain checking gives wrong results for DITA 1.2.
Editing Drag and drop image from UNC path inserts bad href value.
Editing CSS change broke Enter key behavior to insert new <indexterm>.
Editing Slow editing behavior for Enter key in DITA in tables.
Image support Crash occurred rendering a PNG with "sRGB chunk".
Installer App Path registry key incorrectly set
Output PDF output for Chinese and Japanese shows no text by default.
Output Cannot print SVG because <UseBmpPrinting/> is missing from CTM.
Refresh References Double click word followed by period with no space selects word + period
Saving documents XMetaL Author does not prompt to save "dirty" documents.
Saving documents "Undo past save" feature broke ActiveDocument.Saved API (and UI). System would still prompt user to save.
Spell Checking Spelling mistakes are flagged for content marked with xml:lang="zxx"
Spell Checking "Default" spell check user-word-list (UWL) is ignored when user adds word via context menu.
UAC-savvy and per-user settings Documents opened directly into Plain Text view do not trigger RLX generation in %appdata%.
Validation Validating document or selection does not catch processing instruction target that contains illegal characters.
Validation Document with processing instruction that does not contain a target validates (yet should not).
WebDAV support Locking a file on WebDAV server fails if http response body returned has no length specified (i.e. compound response).
XML namespace support Cannot create new doc or open existing doc because adding default namespace without checking for ancestor namespace declarations.

XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0 Service Pack 1

Feature Description
Closing XMetaL when modified, invalid document is open. Closing the XMetaL application window no longer causes XMetaL to crash if a modified, invalid document is open.
Backspace/Undo causing intermittent crashes Entering Backspace or clicking Undo no longer cause crashes.
DOMNode.hasChildNodes API and the absence of child nodes Code has been adjusted such that DOMNode.hasChildNodes API no longer returns random results if there are no child nodes.
Adding a #FIXED attribute to the DTD using script Calling the API method addAttribute() in a script in order to extend the DTD would cause a crash when the 5th argument (intDeclType) was passed the value sqDTFIXED (or the equivalent value of 3). This issue no longer occurs and the sqDTFIXED value can now be used safely.
Background Spellchecker issue XMetaL Author would crash shortly after launching Note: This only affected clients that upgraded from 5.x to 6.0, not clients with a "fresh" installation of XMetaL Author 6.0. Several spell checking DLLs were not updated by the installer. At run time, XMetaL Author would try to invoke new code that did not exist, triggering a crash The installer has been corrected so that this no longer occurs.
Deleting content with tracked insertion and deletions In some cases the background SpellChecker could cause a crash while working with Change Tracking. This issue occurred while deleting content containing tracked insertions and deletions. The issue has been addressed.
Change tracking processing instructions in long text lines Previously, a change tracking PI may have been broken at an incorrect location when a line of text was too long.
Plain Text view line length limitation Lines longer than 4077 characters did not render when a document was edited in Plain Text view. This limitation has been removed. We still recommend enabling and properly designing Pretty Printing for the customization associated with a particular schema. This will aid authors by allowing them to see most of their content at one time, avoiding the need to scroll horizontally. In addition, extremely long lines may also slow down editing while working in Plain Text view.
Using XML namespace, track changes corrupts document The Track Changes feature was introducing unwanted namespace prefixes into deletions. This has been corrected.
xml:lang="xx" and Spell Checker xml:lang="xx" was being ignored by Spellchecker (where "xx" is any unrecognized value). This problem has been fixed. When xml:lang is set to an unrecognized value (one for which there is no spell checking dictionary and that has not been remapped in the INI settings) expected behavior is to use the default language as set in the spell checker's options. With an out of the box installation the default language is "English". With an out of the box installation (no INI settings) elements are not spell checked when the specific attribute value xml:lang="zxx" is set.
'Edit in XMetaL' option opening all selected files in Windows Explorer Selecting multiple files in Windows Explorer and selecting 'Edit in XMetaL' now opens all selected files. XMetaL Author should now open all files when any standard Windows operation triggers the operating system to run the main XMetaL program (EXE) and pass a list of filenames to it.
Input of an invalid attribute value using Attribute Inspector Using Attribute Inspector to change an attribute of type ID to a value that is invalid now consistently prompts users to confirm the change.
Per-user file read/write failure when %appdata% mapped to UNC path Per-user folders and files are now created on a shared server when the Windows %appdata% system path variable is redirected to a UNC path.
File > Save operation intermittently creating zero byte files Code has been adjusted such that an issue involving the File > Save operation creating zero byte-sized files is no longer present.
Scrolling in document with high of number spelling mistakes Performance has been improved for scrolling through a document with a high number of spelling mistakes
McAfee ScriptScan feature triggering crashes in XMetaL Author An issue that caused intermittent crashes when authoring DITA documents with the McAfee ScriptScan feature enabled has been fixed.
Accept/Reject All performance Performance of the Accept All and Reject All change tracking actions have been improved. Previously, for some documents these actions would take a long time to complete. Performance is now much faster.
Cursor placement and CSS :before/after Cursor placement and movement now behaves as expected when CSS :before/after is present in a CSS customization file.
Multiple cell table selection Selecting multiple cells by clicking during drag and drop now works as expected. Previously you had to first select the content inside a cell before selecting multiple cells. This bug was triggered by the new "Check spelling while typing" feature.
Obsolete hotfixes in XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0 SP1 The following hot fixes are made obsolete with the installation of 6.0 SP1 and should no longer be used:
  • xmee_60_20100723.mcr
  • xmee_60_20101102.mcr
  • xmee_60_20101116.mcr
  • xmee_60_20101223.mcr
These files were provided to a select number clients and would have been installed on top of a standard installation of XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0 by you or your organization. If you installed any of these hot fixes, one or more of the files listed above will be in the following folder: <XMetaL Installation Path>\Author\Startup\ To "uninstall" these hot fixes, simply delete the file(s).

XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0

Feature Description
Chameleon schema include support XMetaL no longer requires included schemas to declare a targetNamespace that matches the including schema's targetNamespace
Proper Windows IME positioning Support of the Windows IME for entering Japanese/Chinese/Korean has been improved.
File->New event macro Code adjusted such that File->New event macro is run before other, newer macros to maintain backward compatibility
Setting CSS text-decoration property to "none" CSS inheritance is blocked if the element has text-decoration=none
Suppression of warnings on loading RLX file An INI variable has been introduced to detect if an .rlx has been generated
Inserting content no longer removes existing revision marking Adding text between normal content and content surrounded by revision marks caused revision marking to be removed in XMetaL 5.5. This is no longer the case.
XMetaL hangs when text selected in TagsOn or Normal view without releasing mouse for 5 sec. in a document opened via drag and drop. In XMetaL 5.5, XMetaL hung after selecting text in TagsOn or Normal view without releasing the mouse for 5 seconds in a document opened via drag and drop. This has now been fixed.
File->Exit macro XMetaL Author now supports running multiple "File->Exit" macros.
Schema: valid attribute value containing a space Schema: valid attribute value containing a space no longer causes a validation error
CSS border setting in one element causes crash after deleting another node CSS border setting in one element no longer causes a crash after deleting another node in Normal view.
EPS image causes XMetaL to crash or fail to load or render XML document XML document failed to render when it included a reference to a particular form of EPS file, possibly causing XMetaL to crash. Did not happen for all EPS file types. This has been fixed.

Known issues

DITA auto-id feature is not working for table editing actions

DITA table element types configured to be automatically assigned an id attribute value will not be assigned a value after certain table editing actions. To work around this issue and trigger the auto-assign id algorithm, simply save the document.

The x64 Cameras In Focus sample has some features that don't work

A few of the Cameras In Focus sample's features rely upon Microsoft components that do not have an x64 equivalent (e.g. MSScript.ocx). Some other features rely upon a x64 version of Microsoft Word to be installed on the computer. Please use caution when running this sample as it may not gracefully degrade when invoking features with a dependency on these 3rd party items.

DITA for Publishers outputs are disabled

The D4P outputs (i.e. Kindle, ePub, et al) are currently disabled because the plugin is not compatible with the DITA Open Toolkit version integrated with XMetaL. A new D4P plugin release is expected later in 2016 and we will look into providing an update at that time.

When using DITA 1.3 XML schemas, reusable component feature is disabled

XMetaL's reusuble component feature has not been setup for the DITA 1.3 XSDs. As a result, related menu items like Reuse > Create Reusable Component are disabled.

Built-in toolbar auto-layout on first launch

When XMetaL Author is started for the first time, the built-in toolbars will each be docked on a separate row. Custom DTD-specific toolbars will be docked more efficiently (i.e. multiple per row) providing there is enough horizontal space to do so. Once toolbars have been reorganized (by dragging them around), their positions will be remembered. This vertically oriented auto-layout for built-in toolbars will also take effect any time the XMetaL Author workspace is reset, which is done by holding the Ctrl key down at startup.

Child submenus/menu items not copied when moving top-level menu buttons

Moving top-level menu buttons will not copy the child submenus or menu items. Similarly, moving submenu items will not duplicate those child items.

Support services

For a list of telephone support offerings, online service options, and support downloads, visit http://xmetal.com/support/.

To contact XMetaL support directly, e-mail us at supportxmetal@justsystems.com, or telephone us at one of the numbers listed at http://xmetal.com/content-about-contact-us/.