Arbortext Epic Editor

Unlike other text editors that have been stretched to fit the function of authoring XML content, Arbortext Epic Editor was designed from the ground up as an XML editor. It handles a broad range of applications and does a good job of providing an editing interface for XML content. The user interface is user friendly, but not at all like the standard WYSIWYG document editing environment. Like Adobe FrameMaker, it is a groupware product that is specifically optimized to handle:

• Content collaboratively written and maintained by teams of authors working in multiple languages.

• Content created in reusable components independent of their formatting, stored in content management repositories, and dynamically assembled on demand.

• Content personalized for specific audiences and formatted for delivery on multiple media: Web, CD-ROM, print and wireless.

• Content automation based on systems and software that are easily customized and leverage the broadest available support for XML and related standards.

• Content creation through client-based installations for occasionally disconnected users and through server-based installations accessed by Web browsers for users who are connected full-time.

Out of the box, Arbortext Epic Editor works with file systems and WebDAV-enabled repositories, and has configurable adapters for Documentum, Oracle CM SDK (formerly named iFS), and FileNet Panagon Content Services. Arbortext's other repository partners provide adapters to Epic Editor, including BroadVision One-To-One Enterprise, empolis SigmaLink, Progressive Information Technologies Target 2000, and XyEnterprise Content.

Arbortext offers separate products for content conversion and publishing. The Enterprise E-Content Engine (E3) converts content from Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker and Interleaf documents to XML, and publishes dynamic content to print / PDF and Web / wireless. To publish to CD-ROM, Arbortext offers the CD-ROM Composer.

This E-content engine is an off-the-shelf parser that can be used to automate many different kinds of legacy chunking operations. It does not work miracles: Nothing will correctly parse badly formatted Microsoft Word files. That process requires human intervention and exercise of good judgment. It does provide to the enterprise a tool the equal of, or better than, many learning content parsers that typically require a much higher investment for the same return.

Arbortext Epic Editor is the best of a series of content editors that have attempted to get the most out of XML structure, which allowing users to see a visual representation of their output. Given that the designer understands XML and the learning content, Epic can out-perform FrameMaker as a tool for importing and creating new content. The Epic editor is very often imitated by LCMS vendors that work in structured document formats.