DeltaXML oXygen Plugin

System Requirements

oXygen XML Editor version 12.1 or higher. The software is for use with the oXygen editor for documents containing up to 1 million nodes, on personal computers with up to 8 CPU cores.

'Compare XML...' Specification 

This mode is entered when the 'XML Compare...' item is selected from the DeltaXML menu. It is used for comparing arbitrary XML documents and returning the differences in oXygen's track changes format, i.e. processing instructions that oXygen's Author mode understands and displays.

Any two well-formed XML documents may be compared, provided they have the same root node element types. You must use Author mode to view the result of the comparison. The result may be saved to a file or written to a new editor window. Note that any existing tracked changes will be ignored (i.e. removed before the comparison), which has the affect of comparing the documents as if all their changes had been approved.

Changes to attributes are not shown - where there is any conflict, the attributes in the result document are those from the second document. 

Options available for user configuration include the following:

• The name of the author
• Option to validate the input documents
• Option to control how default attributes, entities and other XML document characteristics are handled (for expert users)
• Option to normalize whitespace when the documents are read in - but note this may remove layout when viewed in Text mode
• Option to report whitespace differences
• Option to compare on a word-by-word basis, or treat text in blocks
• Option to group changed words into blocks of changes
• Option to indent output
• Option to change the characters that are considered to be punctuation
• Option to take attribute values from one or other of the documents when an element is in both documents
• Options to control the various XML declarations at the top of the document (for expert users)

'Compare DITA...' Specification

This mode is entered when the 'DITA Compare...' item is selected from the DeltaXML menu. It is used for comparing DITA documents and by default returns the differences using both DITA's revision and status attributes, where the revision attribute is either set to 'deltaxml-add' or 'deltaxml-delete'.

In order to view the changes in the oXygen editor, some configuration of the CSS files within the editor may be needed - see the Help section of the plugin menu 'DeltaXML'.

Further details of how the DITA configuration works are given in the DeltaXML DITA Compare Specifiction.

Options available for user configuration include the following:

• Option to validate the input documents
• Option to show whitespace changes
• Option to compare on a word-by-word basis, or treat text in blocks
• Option to indent output
• Option to show changes where a ph element is not allowed and so any changes are marked up with square brackets
• Option to include or exclude deleted text
• Option to add rev attributes and to specify the values for these for added or deleted text
• Option to add status attributes
• Option to use an element other than the ph element to show changes (for example if you want to use a specialization of the ph element)

'Compare DocBook...' Specification

This mode is entered when the 'DocBook Compare...' item is selected from the DeltaXML menu. It is used for comparing two DocBook-4.x or two DocBook-5.x documents and highlighting the differences using DocBook's revision flags.

In order to view the changes in the oXygen editor, some configuration of the CSS files within the editor may be needed - see the Help section of the plugin menu 'DeltaXML'.

Further details of how the DocBook configuration works are given in the DeltaXML DocBook Compare Specifiction.

Options available for user configuration include the following:

• Option to validate the input documents
• Option to enable XInclude
• Option to show whitespace changes, and how this is shown
• Option to compare on a word-by-word basis, or treat text in blocks
• Option to use ID attributes as keys, and how to control this
• Option to indent output
• Option to show changes where a phrase element is not allowed and so any changes are marked up with square brackets