Syntext Serna
Encyclopedia
Syntext Serna is a WYSIWYG
XML editor
from Syntext, Inc. Syntext Serna works on Windows
, Linux
, Mac OS X
, and Sun Solaris/SPARC
.
, DocBook
, XHTML
, TEI
, NITF, and other popular XML
document types out-of-the-box. S1000D
support is also available.
Syntext Serna fully supports XML Catalog
s (OASIS Committee Specification 06 Aug 2001).
All operations, including drag&drop, are validated on-the-fly against W3C XML Schema. On opening a document, Syntext Serna also validates it against a specified DTD
.
XML table editing is supported for CALS
, XSL-FO
and HTML
table models.
Syntext Serna eases the work even with extensive documents through large document support, advanced document navigation, and search&replace that allows the user to find text, attribute names and values, comments, and elements.
1.0 and DITA 1.1 documents out-of-the-box as well as DITA specializations.
A number of DITA usability tools simplify insertion and editing of common DITA constructs such as conref, xref, related links, topicref, etc.
References in DITA Maps and topics display the titles retrieved from the referred documents. The user can quickly navigate to the target of a reference.
DITA Maps can be shown with the resolved content of all the referred topics.
The content referred with conref can be shown resolved in-place indistinguishable from regular content. Alternatively, conref can be shown as a highlighted path to the target element.
The content of local conrefs can be edited in-place.
DITA documents can be published to HTML and PDF format via embedded DITA Open Toolkit
1.4. Publishing to PDF can be done either with FOP out-of-the-box or with Antenna House XSL Formatter.
/XSL-FO
stylesheets. The user can switch between several profiled views of a document. For example, a DITA map can be shown as a hierarchy of topicrefs or as the resolved content of the referred topics.
The content of a document can be divided into multiple numbered pages or displayed on a single page. The Paginated view is convenient for working with extensive documents such as Docbook. The Normal view is convenient when the user prefers to avoid breaks in content, for example when working with tables.
, and the DITA conref mechanism.
The most essential XInclude features are supported. It is possible to include a text file or an XML document, or include only a fragment of an XML document.
All entities/XInclude are edited in-place. Changes are propagated with immediate visual feedback to all occurrences of entity/XInclude references in a document.
A full review cycle is supported, including the ability to redline any document portion as inserted, deleted or commented, optionally adding an annotation, and redlining navigation to accept or reject the redlining marks.
The WebDAV
functionality allows users to edit and save documents shared with other people on a WebDAV-enabled server. The SSL
protocol provides for secure communication between Serna and a remote HTTP or WebDAV server.
Syntext Serna fully supports UNICODE
and offers multilingual spell checking
.
The user interface is localized into a number of languages (Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Igbo, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish).
A document can be printed as draft right from Syntext Serna exactly as it appears on the screen. PostScript
and PDF generation is also available.
A customized user interface can be saved for a specific document type (e.g. Docbook or DITA). When the user opens a document, the associated user interface layout comes up automatically.
It is possible to create a configuration package with specific settings (e.g. XML catalog file list) and files (stylesheets, examples, etc.), and then apply it across all installations.
Syntext Serna is integrated with X-Hive Docato, RSuite, Vasont, eXist
, Bluestream, and other WebDAV-enabled CMS
es.
Syntext Serna has an open API
for customizations and integration. The API is available for C++
and Python
scripting language.
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
XML editor
XML editor
An XML editor is a markup language editor with added functionality to facilitate the editing of XML. This can be done using a plain text editor, with all the code visible, but XML editors have added facilities like tag completion and menus and buttons for tasks that are common in XML editing, based...
from Syntext, Inc. Syntext Serna works on Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, and Sun Solaris/SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
.
XML editing features
Syntext Serna supports DITADarwin Information Typing Architecture
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...
, DocBook
DocBook
DocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software but it can be used for any other sort of documentation....
, XHTML
XHTML
XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
, TEI
Text Encoding Initiative
The Text Encoding Initiative is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities. The community runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains a technical standard, a wiki and a toolset....
, NITF, and other popular XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
document types out-of-the-box. S1000D
S1000D
S1000D is an international specification for the procurement and production of technical publications. It is an XML specification for preparing, managing, and using equipment maintenance and operations information. It was initially developed by the for use with military aircraft...
support is also available.
Syntext Serna fully supports XML Catalog
XML Catalog
XML documents typically refer to external entities, for example the public and/or system ID for the Document Type Definition. These external relationships are expressed using URIs, typically as URLs....
s (OASIS Committee Specification 06 Aug 2001).
Structured authoring
The user is assisted in element insertion by means of context-specific lists of valid elements and allowed attributes with possible attribute values, and context-sensitive help for elements and attributes. Unambiguously required elements are created automatically.All operations, including drag&drop, are validated on-the-fly against W3C XML Schema. On opening a document, Syntext Serna also validates it against a specified DTD
Document Type Definition
Document Type Definition is a set of markup declarations that define a document type for SGML-family markup languages...
.
XML table editing is supported for CALS
CALS Table Model
The CALS Table Model is a standard for representing tables in SGML/XML. It was developed as part of the CALS DOD initiative.-History and Rationale:...
, XSL-FO
XSL Formatting Objects
XSL Formatting Objects, or XSL-FO, is a markup language for XML document formatting which is most often used to generate PDFs. XSL-FO is part of XSL , a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and formatting of XML data. The other parts of XSL are XSLT and XPath...
and HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
table models.
Syntext Serna eases the work even with extensive documents through large document support, advanced document navigation, and search&replace that allows the user to find text, attribute names and values, comments, and elements.
DITA support
Syntext Serna supports DITADarwin Information Typing Architecture
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...
1.0 and DITA 1.1 documents out-of-the-box as well as DITA specializations.
A number of DITA usability tools simplify insertion and editing of common DITA constructs such as conref, xref, related links, topicref, etc.
References in DITA Maps and topics display the titles retrieved from the referred documents. The user can quickly navigate to the target of a reference.
DITA Maps can be shown with the resolved content of all the referred topics.
The content referred with conref can be shown resolved in-place indistinguishable from regular content. Alternatively, conref can be shown as a highlighted path to the target element.
The content of local conrefs can be edited in-place.
DITA documents can be published to HTML and PDF format via embedded DITA Open Toolkit
DITA Open Toolkit
The DITA Open Toolkit, or dita-ot, is an open-source publishing system for publishing DITA content to multiple formats. It was developed by IBM, and released as a public standard in 2001, along with DITA.The dita-ot reference implementation uses Ant and Java....
1.4. Publishing to PDF can be done either with FOP out-of-the-box or with Antenna House XSL Formatter.
Document view and profiling
Document view in the Editing Window is dynamic and flexible. It is controlled by XSLTXSL Transformations
XSLT is a declarative, XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents. The original document is not changed; rather, a new document is created based on the content of an existing one. The new document may be serialized by the processor in standard XML syntax or in another format,...
/XSL-FO
XSL Formatting Objects
XSL Formatting Objects, or XSL-FO, is a markup language for XML document formatting which is most often used to generate PDFs. XSL-FO is part of XSL , a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and formatting of XML data. The other parts of XSL are XSLT and XPath...
stylesheets. The user can switch between several profiled views of a document. For example, a DITA map can be shown as a hierarchy of topicrefs or as the resolved content of the referred topics.
The content of a document can be divided into multiple numbered pages or displayed on a single page. The Paginated view is convenient for working with extensive documents such as Docbook. The Normal view is convenient when the user prefers to avoid breaks in content, for example when working with tables.
Content reuse
Syntext Serna supports internal and external entities, XIncludeXInclude
XInclude is a generic mechanism for merging XML documents, by writing inclusion tags in the "main" document to automatically include other documents or parts thereof. The resulting document becomes a single composite XML Information Set...
, and the DITA conref mechanism.
The most essential XInclude features are supported. It is possible to include a text file or an XML document, or include only a fragment of an XML document.
All entities/XInclude are edited in-place. Changes are propagated with immediate visual feedback to all occurrences of entity/XInclude references in a document.
Collaboration and review
Syntext Serna provides several features for international collaborative authoring.A full review cycle is supported, including the ability to redline any document portion as inserted, deleted or commented, optionally adding an annotation, and redlining navigation to accept or reject the redlining marks.
The WebDAV
WebDAV
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...
functionality allows users to edit and save documents shared with other people on a WebDAV-enabled server. The SSL
Transport Layer Security
Transport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer , are cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet...
protocol provides for secure communication between Serna and a remote HTTP or WebDAV server.
Syntext Serna fully supports UNICODE
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
and offers multilingual spell checking
Spell checker
In computing, a spell checker is an application program that flags words in a document that may not be spelled correctly. Spell checkers may be stand-alone capable of operating on a block of text, or as part of a larger application, such as a word processor, email client, electronic dictionary,...
.
The user interface is localized into a number of languages (Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Igbo, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish).
Publishing
Syntext Serna offers multi-channel publishing, including out-of-the-box publishing to HTML and external publishing to PDF with FOP, XEP, or Antenna House XSL Formatter.A document can be printed as draft right from Syntext Serna exactly as it appears on the screen. PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
and PDF generation is also available.
Customization and integration
Syntext Serna is fully customizable and integratable.A customized user interface can be saved for a specific document type (e.g. Docbook or DITA). When the user opens a document, the associated user interface layout comes up automatically.
It is possible to create a configuration package with specific settings (e.g. XML catalog file list) and files (stylesheets, examples, etc.), and then apply it across all installations.
Syntext Serna is integrated with X-Hive Docato, RSuite, Vasont, eXist
EXist
eXist is an open source database management system entirely built on XML technology, also called a native XML database. Unlike most relational database management systems, eXist uses XQuery, which is a , to manipulate its data.- eXist Benefits :...
, Bluestream, and other WebDAV-enabled CMS
Content management system
A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...
es.
Syntext Serna has an open API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
for customizations and integration. The API is available for C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
and Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
scripting language.
Standards support
Syntext Serna supports the following open standards:- DITADarwin Information Typing ArchitectureThe Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...
- DocBookDocBookDocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software but it can be used for any other sort of documentation....
- XPATHXPathXPath is a language for selecting nodes from an XML document. In addition, XPath may be used to compute values from the content of an XML document...
- XIncludeXIncludeXInclude is a generic mechanism for merging XML documents, by writing inclusion tags in the "main" document to automatically include other documents or parts thereof. The resulting document becomes a single composite XML Information Set...
- MathMLMathMLMathematical Markup Language is an application of XML for describing mathematical notations and capturing both its structure and content. It aims at integrating mathematical formulae into World Wide Web pages and other documents...
- CALS TableCALS Table ModelThe CALS Table Model is a standard for representing tables in SGML/XML. It was developed as part of the CALS DOD initiative.-History and Rationale:...
editing and rendering - W3C Schema
- W3C DTDDocument Type DefinitionDocument Type Definition is a set of markup declarations that define a document type for SGML-family markup languages...
- NamespaceNamespaceIn general, a namespace is a container that provides context for the identifiers it holds, and allows the disambiguation of homonym identifiers residing in different namespaces....
s - UnicodeUnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
- Scripting: PythonPython (programming language)Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
- XSLExtensible Stylesheet LanguageIn computing, the term Extensible Stylesheet Language is used to refer to a family oflanguages used to transform and render XML documents....
: XSLTXSL TransformationsXSLT is a declarative, XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents. The original document is not changed; rather, a new document is created based on the content of an existing one. The new document may be serialized by the processor in standard XML syntax or in another format,...
and XSL-FOXSL Formatting ObjectsXSL Formatting Objects, or XSL-FO, is a markup language for XML document formatting which is most often used to generate PDFs. XSL-FO is part of XSL , a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and formatting of XML data. The other parts of XSL are XSLT and XPath... - OASISOASIS (organization)The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards...
XML CatalogXML CatalogXML documents typically refer to external entities, for example the public and/or system ID for the Document Type Definition. These external relationships are expressed using URIs, typically as URLs....
s