I finally got around to doing an oXygen-based authoring environment for a client. Well, what I did is a DocBook variant, plus some bits and pieces that differ from the oXygen standard DocBook offering. Be as it may, it was among the easiest, most straight-forward customisations I’ve done, and I’ve done a few. I did receive a few pointers from George Bina from Syncro Soft, the makers of oXygen (thanks, George!), but I really am amazed by the ease with which this is done.

The authoring environment is integrated with eXist, the XML database, and that part was very easy. It’s all there. I didn’t have to do anything beyond creating a few collections, user groups and new users. It simply works, and yet I’m implementing the Release Candidate (of eXist) rather than a stable version.

Pretty damned cool.

No, I’m not associated with Syncro Soft or the eXist development, and I’m not paid by them in any way, quite the opposite, but I’ve always heard that you should give credit where credit is due.