Hi, I'm a tech writer and a new user of DITA. My company says that I can use any DITA editor I want and will buy me an editor (such as Arbortext) if I so choose. I'm wondering whether any of you have any feedback to give me on Arbortext vs. other DITA editors for creating on-line or Web-based Help. I know that JoAnn Hackos promotes the use of Arbortext, given that her new book on DITA uses Arbortext examples throughout.

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I use Epic Editor to create dita files. Here's a problem I came across recently:

I created a concept topic and saved it as c_admin.dita. While the file is still open, I saved it as another file c_client.dita and changed the concept id. I created a totally new content for c_client.dita and saved and closed it when I finished, believing I had two concept files now.

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Is there any DITA editor that offers global spell check (spell check of all topics in a dita map) or is global spell check only available through a CMS? Same question for global search and replace.

Although XMetaL docs do a good job explaining the application, and how it works with DITA, they don't provide any "how to" information for new users that need to alter the appearance of their docs to accommodate their company's standards. So, I got a preliminary doc from XMetaL, "Customizing DITA PDF Output."

Although I had to burn a Support credit, the doc has been very helpful. However, I cannot get the output I expect. I decided to start with a simple change to the title page, according to the
instructions in their doc.

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Two of my company's heaviest XMetaL users have reported that the application has started to unexpectedly quit, usually when they are copying and pasting large amounts of text.  They were using 4.5, so I upgraded them to 4.6 SP2.  The problem has not been resolved.  The Just System's technical support page offers little information besides the fact that it will cost $100 to ask them this question.  I was just curious if this is anything you've experienced.  I've done the basic maintenance (cleaning off any spyware, disk cleanup, defragmenting, ect.) to no avail.

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