VideosMarkdown Support


This video presents the Markdown Editor that is available in Oxygen XML, allowing you to convert Markdown syntax to HTML or DITA. Aside from the plain text syntax that is common among most Markdown applications, the Markdown editor also integrates many other powerful features that content authors are accustomed to using for other types of documents.


00:00:06Oxygen provides a built-in Markdown editor that allows you to convert Markdown syntax
00:00:11to HTML or DITA and it includes a preview panel to help you visualize the final output.
00:00:18Aside from the plain text syntax that is common amongst most Markdown applications, the Markdown
00:00:24editor in Oxygen also integrates many other powerful features that content authors are
00:00:29accustomed to using for other types of documents.
00:00:34Some of these additional unique features include:
00:00:38- Additional toolbar and contextual menu actions
00:00:41- Automatic validation to help keep the syntax valid
00:00:45- Dedicated syntax highlighting to make Markdown
00:00:48documents even easier to read and edit
00:00:52- Unique features for creating Markdown documents
00:00:55directly in DITA maps and converting Markdown documents to DITA topics
00:00:59- Specialized syntax rules to combine popular syntax features from several specifications.
00:01:07This demonstration will get you accustomed with the interface of the Markdown editor
00:01:12and teach you how to use Markdown files in conjunction with DITA projects.
00:01:17We have already set-up a DITA project that includes a section about common car maintenance tasks.
00:01:24For the purpose of this demonstration, we'll assume that one of our Subject Matter Experts
00:01:28contributed a document about changing the brake pads in your car.
00:01:33This document is written in Markdown format.
00:01:36By default, the editor is split in two sections:
00:01:40The left pane is a text editor that is refined to accept Markdown documents.
00:01:45Notice the syntax highlight feature to make Markdown documents even easier to read and edit.
00:01:51The toolbar menu contains a series of the most commonly used actions and they are intended
00:01:56to be helpful to users who are not accustomed with the Markdown syntax.
00:02:01The right pane is a WYSIWYG preview pane that shows a visual representation of how changes
00:02:08made in the left-side text editor will be converted to HTML or DITA output.
00:02:14The changes you make in the text editor are parsed continually and they are immediately
00:02:19visible in the Preview pane.
00:02:21There are also two tabs available in the Preview pane, one for visualizing DITA output ... and
00:02:28one for visualizing HTML output.
00:02:34Notice the contextual menu which offers access to several useful actions, such as Exporting to DITA.
00:02:49Now... let's start editing the Markdown file ...
00:02:52We already noticed that the file contains a couple of spelling errors,
00:02:57which were highlighted by the automatic spell checker.
00:03:01Next ... we'll add an extra row in the table.
00:03:04Notice that every change we make in the Markdown editing area is immediately rendered in the preview area.
00:03:13And now we'll add an image in the first part of the document.
00:03:16We'll use the Insert Image action from the toolbar to browse for the brake assembly diagram image.
00:03:34Now we are happy with the current form of the document, so we'll add it to our Ditamap.
00:03:42oXygen is able to handle a mix of DITA and Markdown documents aggregated in the Ditamap.
00:03:48Since this task requires solid mechanical knowledge, we'll profile this newly added
00:03:53file for an expert audience.
00:03:59Now we want to publish our DITA map to PDF, so we'll apply an out-of-the-box transformation scenario.
00:04:13And this is how the PDF output looks like.
00:04:20If your project's specific requirements exceed the Markdown's capabilities and you want to
00:04:24use DITA-specific mechanisms such as content reuse, you can easily convert the Markdown
00:04:30files to DITA using this action from the contextual menu.
00:04:38And this concludes our demonstration.
00:04:40Thanks for watching!