Known problems

See also Frequently Asked Questions.

Problems which are solved by upgrading XXE and/or the Java™ runtime are not listed here. Therefore, the first thing to do if you have problems is to upgrade XXE to latest version and to upgrade Java to latest supported version (no beta please!).

Known problems whatever the platform 

Known problems on Windows

Known problems on the Mac

Known problems on Linux

Known problems whatever the platform  

• When an external application changes the contents of the clipboard, XXE may fail to detect this change.

  Workaround: change the editing context of XXE, for example, by moving the caret to another XML node.

• The "Continue Numbering" entry of the menu displayed by the "Change list type" button found in the DITA Topic and DocBook tool bars is not correctly rendered in the styled view of the document in all but the simplest cases. For example, "Continue Numbering" has no visual effect on ordered lists having an ordered list ancestor.

  The reason of this limitation is that the implementation of "Continue Numbering" leverages standard CSS counters. However, when you'll convert your document to other formats such as HTML, PDF, DOCX, etc, there are no such limitations and "Continue Numbering" should give you the expected results.

  No workaround.

Known problems on Windows  

• When XXE is started in a directory which has an UNC filename (example: \\home\jsmith), opening documents is very slow or fails with strange error messages such as "Cannot open file XXX: www.oasis-open.org".

  Workaround: when XXE is started in a directory which has an UNC filename, loading the XML catalog XXE_install_dir/addon/config/catalog.xml silently fails. Therefore, the workaround is to start XXE in a directory which has not an UNC filename, for example: C:\.

  In order to do this:

  1. Right-click on the XMLmind XML Editor “icon” that you use to start XXE. For example, right-click on the XMLmind XML Editor menu item found in the Start menu > All Programs > XMLmind XML Editor menu.
  2. This will display a popup menu. Then select the Properties menu item.
  3. This will display a dialog box. Then select the Shortcut Tab and change the Start in field to, for example, "C:\".
  4. After that, always start XXE using this modified “icon”.

Known problems on the Mac  

• After installing XXE on macOS Catalina 10.15 using the .dmg distribution, the File|Open dialog box and the File|Folder pane do not display any of the files found in the Documents, Desktop and Downloads folders.

  Workaround #1: strangely enough, there is no such problem when you start XXE from a terminal. That is,

  $ applications_dir/XMLmind.app/Contents/Resources/xxe/bin/xxe &

  after installing the .dmg distribution or

  $ XXE_install_dir/bin/xxe &

  after installing the .zip distribution.

  Workaround #2:

  1. Start "System Preferences" and click the "Security and Privacy" icon.
     
  2. Click the Lock icon to make some changes. Type your password when prompted.
     
  3. Select "Full Disk Access" from the list. Click the Plus icon to grant full disk access to another application.
     

     This opens a file chooser dialog box.

  4. On the Mac, all XMLmind applications are started using a shell script. Therefore, you'll have to select file "/bin/sh" in this dialog box. The problem is that, by default, the file chooser dialog box will not show you folder "/usr".

     First use the combobox to select the drive where macOS is installed. That is, first select the root folder.

     
  5. Now press Cmd+Shift-PERIOD to reveal hidden files and folders.
     
  6. Select file "/bin/sh" then click Open to grant shell scripts (of any kind, not only the shell script used to start XMLmind applications) full access to your files.
     
  7. Close "System Preferences".

     This procedure is done once for all.

• On the Mac, double-clicking on a file which should be opened by XXE (e.g. a ".dita" file) starts the application (or brings its window to front if it's already started) but does not cause the file to be opened in the editor.

  No workaround. Seems to be a Java™ bug ([macosx] OpenFilesHandler does not receive fileopen events), unfortunately not fixed in Java 9+.

• On the Mac, the Rewind, Forward and Back entries of the contextual menu of the embedded media player (styled view of XHTML 5, DITA and DocBook 5.1 documents) work erratically.

  No workaround. Seems to be a Java™ bug.

Known problems on Linux  

• XXE is much too small on a Linux computer having a very high resolution (HiDPI) screen.

  Workaround: on Linux computers, HiDPI is often not automatically detected. You'll have to use the "Display scaling" controls found in the General section of the Preferences dialog box.

• Known problems related to the clipboard:
  • XXE randomly hangs for a couple of minutes. This seems to happen only on Linux with a Java^TM runtime 1.6+. This often happens when OpenOffice/LibreOffice is also running.

    Workaround: using an external application, update the contents of the system clipboard by copying to it (i.e. by using Ctrl-C) a small piece of text.

  • Copying text or images from XXE to OpenOffice/LibreOffice works fine but the opposite operation often hangs XXE (or at best makes it very, very, slow).

    Workaround: the workaround to unblock XXE is to copy a piece of text to the clipboard using any application other than OpenOffice/LibreOffice.

  • Copying images from XXE to the Gimp works fine but the opposite operation will not work.

    No workaround.

• When using window managers other than the KDE or Gnome standard window managers, the XXE main window is displayed at a wrong place with a wrong size.

  Workaround: Java™ seems to be tested only against the Gnome and KDE standard window managers. Therefore, you unfortunately need to use another window manager.