Jaxe

A helping hand is always welcomed, especially when working with a programming language. If you need to create a graphical interface for a certain XML language, Jaxe will help you. You can adapt this XML editor to your own XML language. You may customize it with XML schemas and configuration files, depending on your interface, it can adapt to structured XML documents and much more.

Jaxe is written in Java, so you can use it on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other operating systems, if they provide support for Java 1.5 or a later version. The software is free and you don't have to go through an installation process if you wish to use it. The unpacked files use 77 MB of disk space, which is not too much, even for older computers.

Options for creating a new document or opening an existing one are presented right away, on a small window, when you launch the program. If you decide to create a new document, Jaxe will place a series of configurations at your disposal. Once you open a document or create a new one and select a configuration, the software will load its main interface.

Instead of typing code in the editing area, you have to insert XML elements by selecting them, on the left side of the interface. Jaxe will make different elements available, depending on the selected configuration. Inserted elements can be adjusted, in the editing area, by typing in various input fields, specifying file paths or selecting options in drop menus. For example, if you add a metadata element, a series of drop menus and input fields will appear in the editing area, which can be used to enable or disable comments and printing, specifying an author's name and a creation date. If you wish to type your own code, you may insert an HTML code element.

Other elements are adjusted on separate windows. Regardless of how many settings you make, the elements will appear as simple tags in the editing area and you can type your text, insert images or other items between these tags. You may also click certain tags to bring up their settings, if you wish to change them. When you insert and configure XML elements, the software will automatically organize them in a tree structure. Obviously, your projects can be saved in XML format, but you can also export them in HTML, XML and PDF format, as well as XSLT or XSL-FO stylesheets.