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Installing Eclipse and oXygen or XMLSpy

Why Eclipse?

In this manual we will explain how developers can work with Eclipse and either oXygen or XMLSpy Editor used as Eclipse-Plugin. Eclipse is used for CVS operations and file management. Eclipse is available for Mac, Windows or Unix and therefore a good solution for a group of authors working together. Of course you are free to use other CVS and project management software.

Since Eclipse is an open source project, you can get it for free from the eclipse.org website. oXygen, the XML editor of choice (for us), is a commercial software and is based on Java (like Eclipse) and therefore also available for Mac OSX, Windows, Linux and different Unix flavors. Additionally, it is also available as an integrated Eclipse Plugin, which makes it easier for authors using eLML to have all their working files in one place and working with one tool only. The platform-independency of Eclipse and oXygen makes it for us the no. 1 choice when working with XML and CVS. But also Altovas XMLSpy is available es Eclipse plugin but only on Windows platforms. So here is a short tutorial on how to install the software on your computer:

  1. Download Eclipse and install it on your harddisk.
  2. Start Eclipse. You will be asked to define a workspace where all your files will be stored. We recommend creating a new folder and naming it e.g. "eclipse_elml_workspace". Now lets install the oXygen Plugin (the XMLSpy Plugin follows below).
  3. Open the Menu "Help" and go to "Software Update: Find and Install". Select the check box: "Search for new features to install" and press the "Next" button.
  4. From the dialog "Update sites to visit" press the button "Add update site" or "New Remote Site". Enter "oXygen XML Editor" in the "Name" field and the value http://www.oxygenxml.com/InstData/Eclipse/site.xml into the "URL" field of the "New Update Site" dialog. Press the "Finish" or "OK" button. (If the above URL does not work, check the oXygen Download page for more info)
  5. Eclipse will look for the available software now. In the result window select the check box "oXygen XML Editor" and press the "Next" button.
  6. Select the new feature to install "oXygen XML Editor and XSLT debugger" and press the "Next" button in the following install pages. oXygen is downloaded and installed now. When finished, you must accept the Eclipse restart. Now you can open an XML file and oXygen will be loaded into Eclipse. Please note that this is a commercial software so you will have to enter a (trial) license key when oXygen opens the first time.
  7. If you would like to install also the XMLSpy Plugin, please go to Altovas Eclipse page and download the Installer. Follow the instructions of the installer.
Please be aware that installing plugins might cause problems with other already installed plugins. e.g. one of our authors experienced problems when installing both oXygen and the Eclipse Web Tools plugin. You should not have them running both at the same time.