[Stoobie]

Our usage model is not the one assumed by the CMS we are using, SDL Trisoft. We need a way to migrate piecemeal to the CMS, and still maintain our local authoring environment until we see that all works the way it should with the CMS.

That's the reason we need to replace the .soc files.

This is something necessary for the short term, and I'm just trying to make my life and the lives of my fellow writers easier by providing this macro.

I guess SDL managed to find a way to refresh the GUI after copying over their version of the dita.soc and dita_specialized.soc files, but if you say there isn't a way, then I won't waste anymore time on this.

Thanks, Derek.

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[Stoobie]

Where is your MCR file normally located?

C:Program Files (x86)XMetaL 6.0AuthorMacrosxmetal.mcr

The path I'm looking for is not necessarily the full path but a path relative to other files your customization depends on, specifically the DTD/XSD, or if you distribute your customization inside an XAC file. Or if it is an application-level MCR file then I would expect it to be located in the Startup folder.

I actually described what I want to do in another thread, as I didn't think it was relevant to this thread.
[url=http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php/topic,1268.msg4082.html#msg4082]http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php/topic,1268.msg4082.html#msg4082[/url]

I don't actually do the customizations myself, though I'm trying to help with this little bit. We have XAC files, and we have files in the DITA OT directory, including specialized dtds.

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[Stoobie]

This was helpful.

What syntax would I use if the batch file is in the same directory as the .mcr file calling it?

How would I write a relative path?

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[Stoobie]

How about using macros for the frequently used elements?

Yes, I agree. I do that too. That's the best way to speed things up when I use a particular few elements a lot. But in general, I use so many different elements that trying to remember all the keyboard macros I might make would be difficult.

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[Stoobie]

The current behavior was designed so that the “long description” of the element appears at the bottom of the Element List when you single-click.

The long description is a helpful feature. You could make it so that a mouseover, instead of a single-click, triggers the long description, and then a single-click applies it.

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[Stoobie]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I do use the keyboard as well. In my case, I try to avoid double-clicking because it hurts my wrist if I double-click a lot, and when I'm working in XMetaL, there's a lot of clicking (so I try to use the keyboard as much as possible.) A lot of times, I'll click on an element and then hit enter to insert/change. Sometimes I'll do what you suggested and hit the first letter of the element and then use the up/down arrows to get to it.

A single-click would be much easier for me.

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[Stoobie]

I second that.

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[Stoobie]

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for getting back to me. I've been using XMetaL for about a year now, and this is the first time I thought to submit comments/ask for help via the forums. I'm really happy to know that someone on your team is listening and is so responsive. It encourages me to write more.

Here's my perspective on the available conditional styling:

• I pretty much can't use the Format styling, except for the overline and possibly double-underline, because using the other styles would hide any bold, italic, or underline text in my content. I mean, if I have Bold as a conditional style, then how do I know if I have made any text inside that conditional block bold?
• The overline and underline styles make my text difficult to read, so I avoid them if at all possible

So that leaves me with preferred styles using text or highlight colors, and you're correct about not wanting any combinations like yellow with tan. In general, the lighter colors are difficult to see, so they're out, and other colors are sometimes painful to see. And I try to limit my conditional style to either highlight color or text color, but not a combination of both, because that makes it easy to identify when I have multiple conditions applied to a block of text.

Ideally, I would be able to use a color picker, and also, ideally, I would be able to share my conditional styles with anyone else on my team. I understand that it's possible to do so with the file C:Documents and SettingsuseridApplication DataSoftQuadXMetaL6.0ct_preferences.xml, but it would be nice to have this available in a more user-friendly way. Although since it does exist now, I would classify this last request as nice-to-have, while having more conditional styling available as a high.

Ideally, when I roll over the conditional block of text, a tooltip would popup saying the conditions that are applied to that block.

Also, from a usability point of view, it would be much easier for me to have conditions and their styles alway available as a pallette, like the Element List, so I don't have to keep making the dialog pop up in order to apply conditions. It really messes up my train of thought the way it's implemented right now.

This might not be the best place for this, but in general, I really wish that XMetaL was a whole lot more like Dreamweaver. They got so much right with their interface that XMetaL could really learn from. For example, the Element List could be improved greatly by simply making it so that I can add an element by just clicking the element name, instead of having to click it and then click Apply. Ideally, that would be the default behavior, with Change still available as it is now. I could decide if I want the default behavior when clicking an element be either Apply or Change.

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[Stoobie]

Gotcha. Thanks for the info, Derek.

I took a look at the ditaval that XMetaL generates, and it includes conditions that are not defined anywhere in our ditavals.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the amount of time it takes to generate PagePreview output or not, but do you know what I'm talking about and why this is happening?

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[Stoobie]

Aha…that info helped.

Understand that in our group of writers, none of us has a lot of expertise with this tool. We pretty much know what we're told to know, and we generate output directly through the DITA OT, not via XMetaL. So I didn't know about File> Generate Output for DITA Topic. In fact, I was wondering how XMetaL knew which conditions to show and which to hide. I still wonder that, because, as I mentioned, Page Preview did work, just not when I had a condition in the root element.

Anyway, my only complaint is that it takes a very long time to generate output/do Page Preview for the topic. Is that normal? Why is Page Preview so much quicker when there is no condition in the root element?

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