General Configuration of an Oxygen XML Editor Plugin

On the Oxygen XML Editor website there is an SDK with sample plugins (source and compiled Java code) and the Javadoc API necessary for developing custom plugins.

The minimal implementation of a plugin must provide:

• a Java class that extends the ro.sync.exml.plugin.Plugin class
• a Java class that implements the ro.sync.exml.plugin.PluginExtension interface
• a plugin descriptor file called plugin.xml

A ro.sync.exml.plugin.PluginDescriptor object is passed to the constructor of the subclass of the ro.sync.exml.plugin.Plugin class. It contains the following data items about the plugin:

• basedir - File object - the base directory of the plugin.
• description - String object - the description of the plugin.
• name - String object - the name of the plugin.
• vendor - String object - the vendor name of the plugin.
• version - String object - the plugin version.
• id - String object - an unique identifier.
• classLoaderType - a choice between preferOxygenResources (default value) and preferReferencedResources. When choosing preferOxygenResources the libraries which are referenced in the Oxygen XML Editor lib directory will have precedence over those referenced in the plugin.xml configuration file, if they have the same package names. When choosing preferReferencedResources the libraries which are referenced in the plugin.xml configuration file will have precedence over those found in the Oxygen XML Editor lib directory, if they have the same package names.

The plugin descriptor is an XML file that defines how the plugin is integrated in Oxygen XML Editor and what libraries are loaded. The structure of the plugin descriptor file is fully described in a DTD grammar located in [OXYGEN_DIR]/plugins/plugin.dtd. Here is a sample plugin descriptor used by the Capitalize Lines sample plugin:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plugin SYSTEM "../plugin.dtd">
<plugin
    name="Capitalize Lines"
    description="Capitalize the first character on each line"
    version="1.0.0"
    vendor="SyncRO"
    class="ro.sync.sample.plugin.caplines.CapLinesPlugin">
    <runtime>
        <library name="lib/caplines.jar"/>
    </runtime>
    <extension type="selectionProcessor" 
    class="ro.sync.sample.plugin.caplines.CapLinesPluginExtension" keyboardShortcut="ctrl shift EQUALS"/>
</plugin>

If your plugin is of type Selection, Document or General, and thus contributes an action either to the contextual menu or to the main menu of the Text editing mode, then you can assign a keyboard shortcut for it. You can use the keyboardShortcut attribute for each extension element to specify the desired shortcut.