Syntext Serna

Serna XML Editor
Developer(s) Flatirons Solutions, Inc.
Stable release 5.0 / September 2013
Operating system Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Type XML editor
License Proprietary license
Website http://www.serna-xmleditor.com/

Serna XML Editor is a document-oriented WYSIWYG XML editor. Originally developed by Syntext, Inc., and sold under the name Syntext Serna Enterprise Edition, it was purchased by InfoTrust Group in 2012. InfoTrust Group renamed the editor as Serna XML Editor. InfoTrust Group and Flatirons Solutions joined forces in June 2013. A couple of months later, InfoTrust Group took the Flatirons Solutions name and the companies came together under a single Flatirons Solutions brand. Flatirons Solutions no longer makes available the open source version.

XML editing features

Serna XML Editor supports DITA, DocBook, XHTML, TEI, NITF, and other popular XML document types out-of-the-box. S1000D support is also available.

Serna XML Editor fully supports XML Catalogs (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, Serna XML Editor also validates it against a specified DTD.

XML table editing is supported for CALS, XSL-FO and HTML table models.

Serna XML Editor 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

Serna XML Editor supports DITA 1.0, DITA 1.1, and DITA 1.2 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 1.7.5. 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 XSLT/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.

Content reuse

Serna XML Editor supports internal and external entities, XInclude, 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

Serna XML Editor 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 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.

Serna XML Editor 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).

Publishing

Serna XML Editor 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 Serna XML Editor exactly as it appears on the screen. PostScript and PDF generation is also available.

Customization and integration

Serna XML Editor 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.

Serna XML Editor is integrated with X-Hive Docato, RSuite, Vasont, eXist, Bluestream, and other WebDAV-enabled CMSes.

Serna XML Editor has an open API for customizations and integration. The API is available for C++ and Python scripting language.

Standards support

Serna XML Editor supports the following open standards:

See also

References

External links