Released: Arbortext 6.0

Here’s a short summary of SPRs and enhancements added to the product release. Many SPRs and enhancements are part of the release. We highly recommend you log in to the support site and read the release notes. If you have an active maintenance contract you can download the new version from the PTC-Support website as usual. If you need any help please contact our support team.

Summary

Here's the scoop on what's new with the Arbortext 6.0 release

Enhanced support for DITA 1.2

The Arbortext 6.0 release demonstrates PTC’s continued commitment to supporting DITA.

With the new authoring UI for Key References in DITA 1.2, you can create and insert key references directly into your DITA documents with ease. If you are using Arbortext Content Manager, right-click on an object in the Resource Manager to quickly access a CMS context menu. Check-in and check-out content or even view its properties, for increased efficiency in authoring and reuse.

The Resource Manager also has improved usability, with a location field that is synchronized across tabs, eliminating the need to re-navigate as you switch tabs. In addition, it provides an author with various linking options for intelligent graphics. When setting up specialized DITA document types, the Resolved Document for Editing (RDE) and Resolved Document for Styling (RDS) document types are now automatically generated.

Arbortext Editor

• New user interface (UI) for support of DITA 1.2 Keyrefs
• Usability improvements to the DITA Resource Manager
• Auto generation of RDE/RDS document types
• Schematron support
• Additional language support for Spell Checking
• Easier preview of file entities and tag templates
• Re-designed File > New dialog

Arbortext Styler

• Generated text provides support for multi-lingual stylesheets, allowing management of generated text translations
• Page layout greatly extended to provide great levels of control over:
  • Generated content
  • Page regions including content, rotation, size & position and borders
  • Page types created by combining page regions
  • Page sets now provide uneven column width configurations
• Side by side formatting makes it easier to format blocks of content alongside each other
• Custom tables enhanced by:
  • Repeating row background color patterns
  • Generated cell content using XPath
  • Column display order control
• Users can now call ACL or JavaScript scripts anywhere an XPath expression is used
• Table cells will now obey the ‘rotate’ attribute
• Line breaking extended to allow option to break URLs, filenames and APIs more correctly

Arbortext Publishing Engine

• Introducing Publishing Rules!
  • A publishing rule is a set of parameters that are applied to a document publishing process which offers a way to save favorite selections.
  • Multiple rules can be grouped together and used to publish a document multiple times to various outputs.
  • Arbortext Editor users can create a publishing rule on the fly and save it for next time.
• Improved multi-language publishing with combined font support in printed output
• New 64-bit support

Please note: Publishing Engine 6.0 will only be supported on Windows platforms

FlexNet Licensing Change

New licenses for all of the Arbortext 6.0 products will be managed with FlexNet licensing.

This is the same licensing utility used today with Arbortext IsoDraw and other PTC products and will allow users more flexibility with their software licensing configurations. This provides a single consistent licensing utility and process across PTC.

With FlexNet, software licenses will now be available for use by any machine on a network. In addition, when disconnected from a network, Arbortext users will be able to utilize the new “license borrowing” feature.

About the FlexNet Licensing for Arbortext 6.0

For the 6.0 release of Arbortext products including Editor, Styler, Architect and Publishing Engine, licensing will now be managed with Flexera Software’s FlexNet Publisher v10.8.

The switch to FlexNet licensing will also provide Arbortext users a new feature called “license borrowing”. The “license borrowing” feature will give users the ability to checkout (or borrow) a license key for a specified interval while connected to the network which can then be used when disconnected from the network. This will allow users’ to work from home or while traveling and should greatly increase user productivity.

Finally, a new web interface for the Arbortext License Support tool has been designed that allows customers to obtain and manage licenses for all Arbortext products, whether it’s the new Arbortext 6.0 version that utilizes FlexNet, or the Arbortext 5.4 and earlier versions that use the current licensing format.

This will allow the licenses for Arbortext Editor, Architect, Styler and Publishing Engine, as well as Isodraw, to be managed in a single license file with any other PTC software you have.

Flexera Software has long been a global leader in providing licensing solutions. FlexNet Licensing is best known for its ability to allow software licenses to be available (or float) to any machine on a network and this is the same licensing utility used today with IsoDraw and other PTC products.

Floating licenses benefit both users and license administrators as users can more efficiently make use of fewer licenses by sharing them on the network. License administrators’ can control who uses the FlexNet-enabled application and the machines(s) where the licenses are available by implementing a number of server options.

FlexNet Publisher supports serving license rights from:

• A single license server
• Multiple license servers, each serving a subset of the total available licenses
• Multiple license servers configured for three-server redundancy or
• FlexNet can be licensed on each client using a node-locked file

For more information

Documentation supporting Arbortext is delivered in the Arbortext Editor Help Center. You can download the release notes for this and all recent releases from the Reference Documentation area of the PTC web site at ptc.com.