Review - Epic Editor 4.0

When I was researching XML content authoring software for SitePoint's new book publishing business, the popular choice for such work seemed to be Adobe Framemaker 7. Retrofitted in its newest version to provide for the WYSIWYG editing of XML documents, it seemed a promising lead.

Unfortunately, Framemaker's origin as an editor for a non-standard file format really shows. To edit existing XML content in Framemaker, you must import that content into Framemaker Structured Document Format, then export it to XML again when you're done. Those import and export processes, as well as the behaviour of the editor for a given document type, is dictated by an 'Editing Kit'. Unfortunately, Adobe leaves largely up to you the task of creating Editing Kits for any XML document type you might want to edit.

In particular, we were interested in editing XML content in DocBook format. Framemaker comes with an Editing Kit for DocBook, but it has a number of bugs that prevent it from reading valid documents on import, and cause it to produce invalid documents on export.

Enter: Epic Editor

Arbortext Epic Editor provides the same kind of WYSIWYG editing functionality, but works with XML documents directly. With no import/export process to foul up the works, and an environment designed from the ground up to allow writers to generate valid XML documents, Epic Editor really sets a standard to which Framemaker can only aspire.

At first glance, Epic Editor's interface looks a lot like your average word processor, the most obvious exception being the Document Map on the left-hand side of the window. The Document Map displays a structural view of the tags, attributes, and content of your document. By default, it scrolls in sync with the main editor view, so you can always see at a glance the structure of the particular document area you're working on. You can even edit your document right in the Document Map. And for the less technical user, the Document Map can be hidden entirely.

However, once you start working with Epic Editor, you'll quickly realise that this modern word processor interface belies a slick XML editor that lurks quietly beneath the surface.

Handy Shortcuts and Ease of Use

Once you become accustomed to the keyboard shortcuts that are available, marking up heavily-structured content in Epic Editor is an astoundingly productive experience!

The most commonly-used functions have been integrated specifically so that you can accomplish them quickly. Inserting a new element (tag), for example, simply requires you to hit the Enter key. This brings up an alphabetical pop-up menu of all the elements that can legally be added at that cursor position, or placed around the current selection. This pop-up also includes at its top a list of common structural tasks that can be performed at the current location, such as splitting a paragraph in two.

In complex document types (such as DocBook XML), the menu of elements can be quite extensive, so additional element insertion methods exist.

If you type Ctrl-I, a small pop-up window appears containing the same menu of elements, this time in a scrollable list. Typing the first few letters of the element name you want to insert will take you straight to its entry in the list, so you can insert it by hitting Enter. To quickly insert a <function> tag in a DocBook document, for example, you just type 'Ctrl-I, F, U, Enter'. If you make a mistake while typing the element name, you just need to pause a moment, and then start typing the name from the beginning again.