Eclipse Visual Editor for XML 1.1.0 Release Review

Type
Release
State
Successful
End Date of the Review Period

Reviews run for a minimum of one week. The outcome of the review is decided on this date. This is the last day to make comments or ask questions about this review.

Release

1.1.0

Description

The Visual Editor for XML is a set of plug-ins that provide WYSIWYM editing ability for XML files, regardless of the XML involved. Vex uses CSS stylesheets to provide the formatting for the presentation layer. All that is needed is a stylesheet and an appropriate XML file to edit. It hides the XML tags from the users, allows them to have a word processor like experience but store the information in the native XML format.

 

Vex is based off of a contribution from the original Vex project created by John Krasnay and hosted at sourceforge.net. In the year 2008 this code was donated to Eclipse and has been an Eclipse Web Tools Incubator component. In 2011, the project moved under the hoods of the Mylyn Docs project.

 

API Certification

The project leadership certifies that the APIs in this release are "Eclipse Quality".

Architectural Issues

Vex's DOM has undergone a full rework. Support for processing instructions, comments and XML inclusions was added. The DOM now supports nearly the full XML infoset (except CDATA sections and entities). The DOM API is still under development.

This release 1.1.0 will be the last release that supports the Eclipse 3.x platform. All following releases will work only on the Eclipse 4.x platform.

Security Issues

Vex does not handle any personal information and does not share any details about the contents edited by the user.

Non-Code Aspects

User Documentation: The Vex website has received a complete overhaul. It contains a short Getting Started video that shows basic steps on how to use Vex.

Localization: Vex is available in English. Localization using Eclipse Bable is planned for later releases.

Build System: Vex is build with Apache Maven and Eclipse Tycho. It makes use of the Common Build Infrastructure (Gerrit, Hudson, bundle signing).

Developer Documentation: A development environment for Vex can easily be setup using the Eclipse Oomph Installer. A contributor guide shows all necessary steps to get startet with development for Vex. An architecture guide shows the major concepts of Vex's DOM API, other parts are planned for coming releases.

Usability Details

Vex integrates well with the common concepts of the Eclipse IDE. It uses and provides the common mechanisms for contribution (e.g. wizards for document creation, commands and handlers for user interaction).

The improvement of the usability within Vex's editing area is continuously worked on.

End of Life

Coming releases of Vex will not support the Eclipse 3.x platform anymore.

Standards

n/a

Communities
  • The Eclipse forum and the mailing list are used frequently by users and adopters.
  • Contributions are only accepted through Gerrit, part of the code review are automatic test on Vex's Hudson instance.