Signed Docbook Made Easy

Initials docbook

The purpose of this video demonstration is to show you some of the useful features that you will find in oXygen XML when editing DocBook documents in Author mode. Let's start by creating a new DocBook article from one of oXygen's predefined file templates. I can enter the word 'DocBook' in the text field at the top of this dialog box and it will filter the templates. I'm going to select the DocBook 5 Article template and I'll save it as "DocBookSample.xml". By default, the document is opened in the Author visual editing mode and it has some information already populated, based upon that particular template. I don't need some of these pre-populated elements, so I want to delete them. There are several ways to do this and it gives me an opportunity to start showing you some of oXygens's most helpful features. So, to delete some of these elements I don't want I can simply use the mouse to select them and use "Backspace" or "Delete" on the keyboard. Notice that oXygen's automatic validation mechanism now reports an error. This feature helps you to always keep your documents valid in real time. Now I'm going to put the cursor inside the empty 'street' element. Notice that oXygen includes a "Breadcrumb" at the top of the main editing panel that shows you the XML structure at your current location within the document. If you right-click an element on that breadcrumb, you are presented with a contextual menu and in my case I'll use this to delete the 'street' element. The "Outline" view is another helpful feature that helps you to see the document structure in a hierarchical tree. You can also right-click an element in this view to open the contextual menu ... and for my purposes, I'm going to delete the 'author' element along with its child elements. Notice that the Outline view is continuously synchronized with the main editing panel. Now let's start editing the document by adding text for the title of the Article and the first section. Next, lets add some styling to some content. I've decided that I want to bold the word "oXygen" and italicize the name of the "docbook dtd" and I can do this by simply using toolbar buttons. Notice that there is a group of toolbar buttons that are specifically designed for DocBook-related editing actions. Now, suppose that I want to insert a new paragraph. There are two simple methods for inserting XML structure in Author mode. I could once again use a toolbar button, or I can use the Content Completion Assistant that presents a list of proposals that may be inserted at the current location. To open the Content Completion Assistant, I simply press the Enter key. Notice that the first proposal in the list is "New para". That's because the Content Completion Assistant determined that it would be the most logical proposal at the current location within the document. Now I'm going to insert a new section, again using a toolbar action. This particular action is located in the "Section" drop-down menu. Let's demote this new section so that it's a subsection of the first section. Now I'm going to insert an image into that subsection. Again, there are several ways to do this. I can use a toolbar button, or I can simply drag the file from the "Project" view and drop it into the document at the location where I want it. Similarly, I can also use copy and paste actions and oXygen's "Smart Paste" feature will determine the appropriate structure and location to keep the document valid. Notice how oXygen saved me several steps by inserting the required child elements along with the parent element to make the DocBook structure valid. For the sake of how it will look in the output, I'll promote this "Images" section back to the way it was. Next, let's add another section. If I look at my current location in the "Breadcrumb", I see that the cursor is currently in the 'imagedata' element and I need to navigate back to the appropriate level in the XML structure. I can do this by using the arrow keys and watching the "Breadcrumb" until it indicates that I've navigated back to the "article" element. This time, I'm going to insert the new section using the Content Completion Assistant and also show another helpful feature called a "Quick Fix". After I insert the element, notice that the automatic validation reports another error. If I click on the lightbulb in the left vertical stripe, I have some "Quick Fix" proposals to choose from. I'll select the one that will insert a "title" element ... and I'll insert a new paragraph ... and now the document is valid again. In this new section, I'm going to add a variety of things to show you some other features. First, I'll insert a list and some list items. Of course, I can do this by simply using toolbar actions, but suppose the list items already existed in the document as paragraphs. I can easily convert these paragraphs to list items by selecting the paragraphs and then clicking the appropriate list item button on the toolbar. Next let's sort the list items. I select the list and click the "Sort" button on the toolbar. This opens a dialog box where you can choose some options for the sorting operation. Now suppose that I decide that the second list item should be its own list, as a child of the first list item. I can select that list item and use the "Tab" key on the keyboard as a shortcut to demote it. Similarly, "Shift + Tab" promotes it. Next, I want to insert a cross reference that links to a section at the beginning of the document. However, first I need to assign an ID to the section that I want the link to reference. There are several ways to do this. First, I can select the element, right-click anywhere in the main editing pane and select "Generate IDs". This generates a random ID for the currently selected element. Alternatively, I can select the element and use the "Attributes" view to assign an ID. You can also use the Alt + Enter keyboard shortcut to open an in-place attributes editor and assign it there. Now that the section has an ID, let's create the link. I highlight the text where I want the link and click the "Link" drop-down menu from the toolbar. Notice that there are several different types of links to choose from in this drop-down menu, but for my purposes I want to select "Cross Reference (link)". This opens a dialog box where I select the ID that I just assigned and after clicking "OK" the link is created and notice that there is now a small link icon to the left of the linked text. I can click that link icon to test the cross reference and oXygen will navigate to that reference. Now I'll insert a table into the document. I navigate to the end of the section and click the "Insert Table" button on the toolbar. This opens a dialog box that allows you to configure various options for the new table. I'll just choose to create a simple 4 by 4 CALS table and then I'll customize it after it's inserted. To customize the table, you can use actions that are available on the toolbar and in the contextual menu, and if you click the "colspecs" option above the table, it expands a section where you can customize some column options, such as the width and alignment. Suppose that I want the first two header cells to be merged to accommodate a single phrase that's centered. I select the cells and use the "Join" action on the toolbar to merge them. Then I enter the phrase, and to change the alignment, I'll select "Table Properties" from the contextual menu and in the resulting dialog box, I'll change the horizontal alignment to "center". Now I'll configure the table in various ways using the table editing actions and the options in "Table Properties". Also, notice that you can hover outside the table to select entire rows or columns. Let's select a row and remove the row separator. Once the document is complete, it can be easily exported to various output formats, such as WebHelp, PDF, or HTML, by using one of the built-in transformation scenarios. For the purposes of this video, I'll use a DocBook PDF transformation, and after I click "Apply", oXygen processes the transformation and the result is automatically opened in my system's default PDF viewer. This concludes our demonstration, and as always, thanks for watching.