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Creating a New Project

Oxygen XML Developer allows you to organize your XML-related files into projects. This helps you manage and organize your files and also allows you to perform batch operations (such as validation and transformation) over multiple files. You can also share your project settings and transformation/validation scenarios with other users. Use the Project view to manage projects, and the files and folders contained within.

Creating a New Project

To create a new project, select New Project from the Project menu, the New menu in the contextual menu, or the drop-down menu at the top-left of the Project view.

This opens a new project wizard:

Figure 1. New Project Wizard
Tip: There are several sample project templates available for DITA users that can be used as a starting point or for inspiration. These sample project templates are found in the Framework templates > DITA folder in the New Project wizard:
  • Sample DITA Project - This is a basic DITA project meant to help new users see how a DITA project is structured.
  • Startup DITA Project - This is a startup DITA project that imposes a custom set of options (e.g. spell check settings and custom dictionaries), a custom DITA framework extension (e.g. custom new file templates. custom actions, custom CSS used for visual editing) and a folder structure for a DITA project according to best practices. Once created, the project contains a Readme.html file that explains all customizations and their benefits. If you plan to start your own DITA project using a version control system (such as Git), you can use this startup DITA project template to customize various aspects of DITA editing and share them with your team.
With the exception of the Default project template, which is a pseudo-template and does not exist on the local disk (it is used only to create a new .xpr file), project templates are actually ZIP archives (with a .zxpr extension) and are stored within the file template directory structure (for example, frameworks\dita\templates\sample-project\Sample DITA Project.zxpr).
Tip: Archives with a .zxpr extension can be edited in the Archive Browser view.

After selecting a project template, you can specify the following:

Project file name
Specifies the name of the new project file. Oxygen XML Developer provides a default proposal for the file name based on the following rules:
  • If there is an .xpr file inside the archive, its name is used.
  • Otherwise, the name of the template is used.
Project directory
Specifies the directory where the archive content will be extracted.
Note: The archive should not contain an extra single folder as the root. For the Project directory path to work properly, the archive must have the .xpr file on the first level, along with the other resources (files and folders).

Once you are done, click the Create button to begin the creation process. Oxygen XML Developer extracts the content from the archive inside the path specified in the Project directory field.

Editor Variables in Project Templates

By default, the editor variables inside project resources created from a project template are not resolved. To start having them resolved, the project template must be customized by using the expandEditorVariablesIncludeFilter property. This filter determines the resources where the editor variables will be resolved. If you need to exclude a subset of resources from the set specified by the expandEditorVariablesIncludeFilter property, the expandEditorVariablesExcludeFilter property can be used.
Note: Usually, project files (*.xpr), framework files (*.framework), and framework extension scripts (*.exf) should be excluded from the editor variable resolving process.

The values of the inclusion and exclusion filters can be file paths relative to the project directory that can use wildcards or simply wildcards. Each filter can have multiple values, separated by spaces.

Possible filter values:
  • ./* - Matches all resources from the first level in the project directory.
  • * or ./** - Matches all resources on all levels inside the project directory.
  • dir1/dir2/*.dita - Matches all .dita files from [PROJECT_DIR]/dir1/dir2, but not from subdirectories of dir2.
  • dir1/dir2/**/*.dita - Matches all .dita files from [PROJECT_DIR]/dir1/dir2, including those from subdirectories of dir2.
  • dir1/**/* - Matches all resources on all levels inside [PROJECT_DIR]/dir1.
  • dir1/article1.xml, dir2/article2.xml - Matches only the two .xml files.
  • ./**/*_suffix.md, ./**/prefix_*.html - Matches all .md files with names that end with _suffix and all .html files with names that start with prefix_.

Adding Items to the Project

To add items to the project, select any of the following actions that are available when invoking the contextual menu in the Project view:

New > File
Opens a New file dialog box that helps you create a new file and adds it to the project structure.
New > Folder
Opens a New Folder dialog box that allows you to specify a name for a new folder and adds it to the structure of the project.
The project itself is considered a logical folder. You can add a logical folder, or content to a logical folder, by using one of the following actions that are available in the contextual menu, when invoked from the project root:
New > Logical Folder
Creates a logical folder in the tree structure (the icon is a magenta folder on macOS - ).
New > Logical Folders from Web
Replicates the structure of a remote folder accessible over FTP/SFTP/WebDAV, as a structure of logical folders. The newly created logical folders contain the file structure of the folder it points to.
Add Folder
Adds a link to a physical folder, whose name and content mirror a real folder that exists in the local file system (the icon of this action is different on macOS - ).
Add Files
Adds links to files on the local file system.
Add Edited File
Adds a link to the currently edited file in the project.

Using Linked Folders (Shortcuts)

Another easy way to organize your XML working files is to place them in a directory and then to create a corresponding linked folder in your project. If you add new files to that folder, you can simply use the Refresh (F5) action from the project contextual menu and the Project view will display the existing files and subdirectories. If your files are scattered among several folders, but represent the same class of files, you might find it useful to combine them in a logical folder.

You can create linked folders (shortcuts) by dragging and dropping folders from the Windows Explorer (macOS Finder) to the project tree, or by selecting Add Folder in the contextual menu from the project root. Linked folders are displayed in the Project view with bold text. To create a file inside a linked folder, select the New > File action from the contextual menu. The linked files presented in the Project view are marked with a special icon.
Note: Files may have multiple instances within the folder system, but cannot appear twice within the same folder.

For more information on managing projects and their content, see Project View.

For more details about how you can share projects with other users, see Sharing a Project - Team Collaboration.