Syntext Serna is an easy-to-use WYSIWYG XML editor that works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Sun Solaris/SPARC. Serna supports DITA, Docbook and other popular XML document types out-of-the-box. S1000D support is also available.

Serna looks and works like a conventional word processor, yet it gives you great flexibility and a full range of means of authoring structured XML content. Serna lets you work with documents composed of various reusable components and viewed as a transparent integrated whole.

DITA Support

Serna supports DITA out-of-the-box. Serna lets you work with DITA 1.0 and DITA 1.1 document types as well as with DITA specializations.

A number of DITA usability tools allow the user to get the most for DITA authoring:

• Easy insertion and editing of common DITA constructs like conrefs, xrefs, related links, topicrefs, etc.
• Quick navigation to the target of the xref, related link, conref, and topicref.
• DITA Maps can be shown with the resolved content of all the referred topics.
• The content referred with conref can be shown resolved in-place indistinguishable from regular content. Alternatively, conref can be shown as a highlighted path to the target element.
• The content of local conrefs can be edited in-place.
• References in DITA Maps and topics display the titles retrieved from the referred documents.

DITA documents can be published to HTML and PDF format via embedded DITA Open Toolkit 1.4. Publishing to PDF can be done either with FOP out-of-the-box or with Antenna House XSL Formatter.

Other Highlights

• Intuitive, fully customizable GUI localized into several languages (Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Igbo, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish).
• Built-in support for all popular document types (DITA, Docbook, XHTML, TEI P4, NITF, etc).
• Flexible document view and profiling controlled by XSLT/XSL-FO stylesheets.
• On-the-fly document validation against XML Schemas.
• Entity and XInclude in-place editing.
• Drag-and-drop with on-the-fly validation.
• Advanced document navigation.
• Context-sensitive element help.
• Table support (XSL FO, CALS).
• Redlining (annotations).
• Large document support.
• Multilingual spell checking.
• International collaborative authoring with multilingual support (UNICODE).
• Enterprise features, such as CMS integration and configuration management.
• Customization and integration APIs (Python and C++).
• WebDAV support with SSL.

CMS Integration

Serna works with X-Hive Docato, RSuite, Vasont, eXist, Bluestream, and other WebDAV-enabled CMSes.

Platforms

Serna is available for all major platforms: Microsoft Windows™ (2000, XP), Linux, Mac OS X, and Sun Solaris/SPARC.

Editions

Serna is available in the following editions: Personal/Home, Professional, and Enterprise (recommended for DITA users). Also, Academic and Site License options are available.

For more information about Syntext Serna, please visit:

www.syntext.com/products/serna/index.htm

A free fully functional trial version can be downloaded from:

http://cms.syntext.com/index/trial/input