XMetaL Author Essential 17.0 Release Notes

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XMetaL Author Essential 17.0 Release Notes

Contents

• Introduction
• New features
• Known issues
• Support services

Introduction

XMetaL Author is the leading authoring application for organizations
using any XML document type. 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 introduces an upgraded XMetaL
Development Environment, improved editor performance and High-DPI monitors
support, new XMetaL APIs for running scripts asynchronously and managing
document highlighted text, integration with Microsoft Edge, and bookmarks and
comments support. For a complete list of new features, see
New features.

New features

XMetaL Editor and Development Environment

XMetaL Author Essential 17.0:

• Development, build
  environments and SDKs are upgraded to the most recent versions.

• It passed formal QA tests
  on the Windows 11 platform.

• Significant performance
  improvements for file opening and documents editing operations

  For large test documents (over 4 Gb size, containing over 50.000
  elements and over 1000 inline images) opening documents time decreased several
  times.

• High-DPI monitors support

  XMetaL now takes the DPI of displays into account and is able to
  natively render their contents on High-DPI monitors.

• New APIs for:
  • running specific
    XMetaL scripts in synchronous and asynchronous modes
  • managing document’s
    text highlighting
• Support of integration
  with Microsoft Edge

  XMetaL 17.0 installation contains XMEdge ActiveX control that can
  be hosted by the XMetaL Resources Manager. XMEdge ActiveX control allows
  bidirectional interactions between XMetaL and Microsoft Edge via a subset of
  ICoreWebView2, ICoreWebView2Controller, ICoreWebView2Environment interfaces,
  and XMetaL APIs and scripts.

  • Access from the
    Microsoft Edge script engine to XMetaL scripts via:
    • asynchronous post
      messages to XMetaL
    • asynchronous run
      XMetaL macros and scripts
    • synchronous/asynchronous XMetaL API calls
    • synchronous/asynchronous XMetaL script global functions calls
  • Access from the
    XMetaL script engine to Microsoft Edge scripts via:
    • asynchronous post
      messages to Microsoft Edge
    • asynchronous
      execution Microsoft Edge scripts
    • helper methods
      that allow simulation of synchronous browser navigation and script calls
  • Access from Microsoft
    Edge script engine to ActiveX controls via:
    • creating ActiveX
      controls by Prog IDs

      ActiveX control methods can be called synchronously or
      asynchronously from Microsoft Edge scripts.

  • Passing XMEdge
    notifications and data to the XMetaL script environment

    Notifications and data exchange between XMetaL and Microsoft
    Edge uses JSON format.

    Notifications and data are related to:

    • Microsoft Edge
      Navigation events
    • Processing
      messages
    • Executing scripts
    • Microsoft Edge
      accelerators keys events
• Various customer’s feature
  requests and defect fixes are addressed.

Find text on WEB

An XMetaL tool with the following features:

• Demonstrates XMetaL
  script customization based on integration with Microsoft Edge

• Allows finding Active
  document selected text on the WEB or passing selected text as a URI parameter
  to online WEB services

• Allows maintaining home
  page, search engines and favorite sites

• Allows defining xml
  template and pasting it to an XMetaL active document

  Parameters of xml template are web page title, web page URI,
  clipboard content, and active document selection.

• Allows running XMetaL
  macro scripts

  Macro script has full access to XMEdge ActiveX control interfaces,
  web page scripts, and XMetaL script environment.

• Contains examples of
  Google, Bing and WIKI search engines, Google online translate service, paste
  templates, and test macro

Bookmarks and comments

An XMetaL tool with the following features:

• Allows marking active
  document text as a bookmark without changing document content

• Allows adding/modifying
  bookmark comments without changing document content

• Contains four predefined
  groups of bookmarks

• Bookmark can be assigned
  (or reassigned) to any group.

• Every group of bookmarks
  has a designated highlighting color.

• Every group of bookmarks
  can be shown or hidden.

• Bookmarks can be sorted
  or ordered manually.

• Allows finding bookmarks
  by bookmark or comments text, opening document and scrolling to selected
  bookmark

• Context popup menu and
  bookmarks macros with connection to “Find and Execute XMetaL Command” allow
  fast access and efficient bookmarks and comments management.

• Allows fast navigation
  between bookmarks

• Allows showing only
  bookmarks of specific document

• Contains three types of
  user interfaces for flexible and efficient work with documents

Known issues

Tools > Options dialog accelerators don’t work
sometimes

Some property pages within the new unified options dialog won’t
respond to keyboard shortcuts until focus is moved into the embedded XFT form
that is on the active property page. This limitation relates to Windows’
handling of embedded ActiveX controls.

The x64 Cameras In Focus and Meeting Minutes samples have some
features that don’t work

A few of the Cameras In Focus and Meeting Minutes sample’s features
rely upon Microsoft components that do not have an x64 equivalent (e.g.
MSScript.ocx, MSCAL1.ocx). Yet other features rely upon a x64 version of
Microsoft Word to be installed on the computer. In the x64 version of the
software, these samples have been removed from the Help > Samples submenu to
avoid issues. You can still invoke either samples template but please use
caution when running these samples as they may not gracefully degrade when
invoking features with a dependency on these 3^rd party items.

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
[email protected], or
telephone us at one of the numbers listed at
http://xmetal.com/content-about-contact-us/.

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