A custom attribute editor for Oxygen XML Editor

Hello everyone,

For quite some time, Oxygen XML editor has offered support for 
configuring the proposals for attribute values through a configuration 
file [1]. In this configuration file you can either explicitly specify 
the values

*<match*  attributeName="type"* >*
     *<items>*
         *<item*  value="stanza"*/>*
         *<item*  value="refrain"*/>*
     *</items>*
*</match>***

or you can specify an XSLT script that will be executed and will return 
these values:**
**

**<match* attributeName="type"*>***<xslt*  href="get_values_from_database.xsl"  action="replace"*/>*
*</match>*

The XSLT mechanism in particular found was quite used (by our users in 
general and by the TEI community in particular) to retrieve values from 
external data sources: local configuration files, XML databases etc. One 
complaint that we received was that in many situations the possible 
values aren't human readable, they are just codes. The human readable 
information was present in the annotation associated with each value but 
the user still had to manually navigate through the values and inspect 
the annotations, in search of the desired value.

T offer a solution to this problem I've used one of Oxygen's extension 
points to implement a custom attribute value editor. This editor is 
invoked when you try to edit an attribute inside the Attributes View. It 
shows a dialog that presents the possible values together with their 
annotations and a search field that can be used to locate a particular 
value. I guess this search field is the important feature because it 
searches in the annotations as well.

If you are interested in this, here is how you can install it (as 
prerequisites, you must have Oxygen v16 or later and a TEI framework):

1. download the TEI extension framework from:

https://github.com/AlexJitianu/oXygen-XML-editor-attribute-editor/raw/master/build/tei/attribute-editor-framework.zip

2. unzip it inside {oxygenInstallDir}/frameworks . Please make sure you 
don't create any additional directories in the process. After unzipping, 
the file structure should look like this:
{oxygenInstallDir}
----frameworks
------attribute-editor-framework
--------tei_p5_-_attribute_value_editor.framework

3. edit attribute-editor-framework/config_attribute_editor.txt . This is 
the configuration file in which you specify the element and the 
attribute that should be edited using this specialized dialog. It 
accepts pairs like this:

elementLocalName1, attributeLocalName1
elementLocalName2, attributeLocalName2

The default configuration will activate this editor for the @part 
attribute  on a <p> element. So if you just want a quick test, skip step 
3. and just try and edit this attribute in the Attributes View.

The source code is open source and available on the same GitHub project. 
As always, all feedback is much appreciated!


[1] 
https://oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/18.0/ug-editor/topics/configuring-content-completion-proposals.html

Best regards,
Alex
-- 
Alex Jitianu
<oXygen/>  XML Editor, Schema Editor and XSLT Editor/Debugger
http://www.oxygenxml.com