1.1. I have a single user license and I want to use epcEdit on different computer systems. Do I need a license key for every system?
No. One registered copy of epcEdit may either be used by a single person who uses the software personally on one or more computers, or installed on a single workstation used non-simultaneously by multiple people, but not both.
No. Licenses for epcEdit are multi-platform licenses, and the license key can be used on all supported platforms as long as you comply with the epcEdit license agreement.
Currently, epcEdit runs on Linux (Intel), Windows, and Solaris systems. Other systems may be supported in the future. Please contact epc for additional details.
The will be version for OS X on the Apple Macintosh, but this depends on the availability of Tcl/Tk for OS X. At the time of this writing, the Tk version for OS X is under development, but not stable enough for production purposes.
Yes, you can. However, more than 80% of all HTML documents on the web are invalid in the sense that they are not well-formed SGML documents, do not conform to the HTML DTDs, or include vendor-specific extensions that are not part of the HTML standards.
This applies especially to many HTML documents that were created with WYSIWYG HTML editors. epcEdit will complain about errors in such documents or even refuse to load them.
No. WYSIWYG word processors do not provide useful markup, so importing such files would be of little use. Some tools exist to convert word processor files such as Word documents into SGML or XML, but the markup that is inserted by these tools only reflects the formatting of the original document.
The process of adding content-related markup is usually referred to as up-translating. Sometimes, this can be done automatically; sometimes, up-translations have to be created by hand.
Some companies have specialized on providing up-translation services. If you need to convert a large amount of data to XML or SGML, you may want to contact one of these companies.
From epcEdit version 1.1 on, the wrapped version of epcEdit is discontinued. This is due to the low demand for this version of epcEdit. A second reason is that the software that we used to create the wrapped version contained a number of bugs that were beyond our control.
If you have purchased a license for the wrapped version before, you can use your license key for the professional version of epcEdit 1.1 and above.
You can download an evaluation version of epcEdit from www.epcedit.com. When you download epcEdit, an evaluation license key will be sent to you by e-mail that will allow you to use epcEdit for a 60-day evaluation period. When you elect to purchase a license for epcEdit, you will receive a permanent license key as a replacement for the evaluation key.
epcEdit uses a license key to activate the product. This license key is not part of the installation packages. We need your e-mail address to send you a license key for activating epcEdit, so please enter a correct e-mail address. We will not pass your e-mail address to third parties.
If you wish to receive future notifications about new releases of epcEdit, please check the appropriate option in the form for entering your e-mail address. If you do not wish to receive such notifications, make sure that this option is unchecked.
2.3. The download process was interrupted. Now I get the message that I have already received a license key when I try to register again.
You do not need to register again for downloading epcEdit. Instead, you can go directly to the download area and fetch the installation package for your system(s).
When upgrading from epcEdit 1.0 or 1.1, please do not install epcEdit 1.2 into the same location as epcEdit 1.0 or 1.1. On a Windows System, it is recommended to uninstall epcEdit 1.0/1.1 first. Please back up any files that you may have modified, such as templates or catalog files before uninstalling epcEdit.
On Linux and Unix Systems, we recommend to rename the existing epcEdit installation before installing epcEdit 1.2. Based on a default installation location of /usr/local/tksgml, we suggest to perform the following steps:
Rename the existing epcEdit directory with the following command:
mv /usr/local/tksgml /usr/local/tksgml-1.1
Create an installation directory for epcEdit 1.2:
mkdir /usr/local/tksgml-1.2
Create a symbolic link to the new installation directory:
ln -s /usr/local/tksgml-1.2 /usr/local/tksgml
Now you can run the epcEdit 1.2 installation program to install epcEdit in the default location of /usr/local/tksgml. Your existing installation of epcEdit 1.1 will remain in /usr/local/tksgml-1.1. You may then copy an relevant data and modifications from the directories in /usr/local/tksgml-1.1 to /usr/local/tksgml and (optionally) remove the previous installation from /usr/local/tksgml-1.1.
After starting epcEdit for the first time, you should go to the Files tab of the Preferences dialog (choose -> from the main menu) and adjust the settings for the document and template directories. The settings of these options depend on how you have set up your directories and how you share documents and templates with other users, so they can not be determined by the epcEdit installation program.
On a Linux or Unix system, you may want to add the directory /usr/local/tksgml/bin to your path (assuming that you have installed epcEdit in the default location) or create a symbolic link to/usr/local/tksgml/bin/epcedit in one of the standard application directories, e.g. with
ln -s /usr/local/tksgml/bin/epcedit /usr/local/bin/epcedit
The default permissions for these directories have been changed so that only the user who installed epcEdit is allowed to write to these directories. You can change the permissions of these directories with the chmod command. For example, you can give write permissions for the example directories and files to the users group with these commands:
chgrp -R users /usr/local/tksgml/examples
chmod -R g+w /usr/local/tksgml/examples
The exact permissions depend on the security policy on your system.
If you get errors like "X0134" is not a function name, epcEdit assumes that your document is an SGML document. Because epcEdit can handle both SGML and XML documents, it needs to distinguish both types of documents. If your document begins with an XML declaration or the file name of your document ends in .xml, epcEdit will recognize you document as an XML document; otherwise it will assume that you are loading an SGML document.
Stick to the following conventions for your XML documents: Use file names with an extension of .xml and provide an XML declaration at the beginning of the document.
If your are editing only XML documents, you can set the EPCEDIT_XMLONLY environment variable to 1 before starting epcEdit.
3.2. I have been told that I have to load the xml.dcl file first but I cant figure out how to do that with epcEdit.
That is not necessary. If your document starts with an XML declaration of the form <?xml version="1.0"?>, epcEdit will use the XML syntax (and imply the XML declaration) automatically.
3.3. My SGML document contains markup in lower case, but when I load the document into epcEdit, all element names appear in upper case.
This depends on the NAMECASE GENERAL settings of the SGML declaration and applies only to SGML documents.
When a document is loaded, epcEdit normalizes the names for elements and attributes. If the SGML declaration in use states that case is not significant for names, epcEdit will translate all element names into upper case by default. You can tell epcEdit to use the lower case version of element and attribute names by setting the Use lowercase option in the Preferences dialog to Yes.
epcEdit 1.0 style sheets defined the display settings for elements without paying attention to the location of these elements in your documents. In epcEdit 1.1, you can add new style sheet items in the form of restricted XPath statements to the style sheet.
For example, if you want to define the style sheet for a chapter title (i.e. a title element that occurs in a chapter element), you will add a new XPath like chapter/title to address title elements that occur in chapters. You can the define the style sheet settings for chapter/title in the style sheet dialog. Please refer to the "Style Sheets" chapter in the user manual for more details.
epcEdit tries to determine your input locale and convert your input characters to its internal encoding. Determining the input encoding may fail sometimes. If this occurs, you can force epcEdit to use a specific input encoding by creating a small Tcl with a name of setenc.tcl script in the lib/epcEdit1.1/extensions directory. This script should contain a single line:
encoding system iso8859-2
where "iso8859-2" should be replaced with the name of your system encoding.To get a WYSIWYG-like view of the table, you will have to start the table editor. Please refer to "The table editor" in the user manual for more details.
You can create a table only if your documents DTD defines a table model and a table element can occur at the current insert location.
If you are editing a well-formed XML document (where no DTD is available), you will have to add the definitions for a table model of your choice. See "Tables in well-formed XML documents" in the user manual for details.
epcEdit uses an external spell checker (ispell or aspell under Unix, aspell on Windows). If neither ispell nor aspell are found on your system, the spell checker command will fail.
Both ispell and aspell are available free on the internet.
RedHat Linux uses the aspell program and installs a compatibility script with the name of ispell. epcEdit expects to find the ispell dictionaries, but they are not available because aspell is used. To solve this issue, you will have to specify the dictionary directory /usr/lib/aspell in the configuration dialog of the spell checker.
When you have installed epcEdit, the complete source code of epcEdit's user interface has been stored on your system and is accessible to you in the form of Tcl scripts. You can alter any of the Tcl scripts, provided that the initial copyright notice is left intact.
Please check the online documentation at www.epcedit.com first. If this does not solve your problems, you can send an e-mail to support@epcedit.com.