• XML authoring in print appearance.

• Out-of-the-box support of complex industrial DTD/schemas like DITA, Docbook, TEI.

• On-the-fly XSL-driven XML rendering and transformation (using XSLT and XSL-FO subset).

• On-the-fly document validation against XML Schemas .

• Drag-and-drop with on-the-fly drop validation.

• Powerful profiling with on-the-fly switchable XSLT parameter sets.

• Large document support.

• XInclude and entities in-place editing .

• Redlining (Annotations) .

• Table support (XSL FO, CALS).

• XML catalog support.

• Context-sensitive Element Help.

• WebDAV support.

• C++ API.

• Python API.

• Spell checking.

• Highly customizable GUI.

• Ability to create and insert custom content.

• GUI Internationalization: Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Igbo, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish.

• Multilingual (UNICODE) support.

• Availability for Microsoft Windows™ (2000, XP), Linux, Mac OS X, and Sun Solaris 8.

• WYSIWYG and tag views.� Document may be edited in WYSIWYG, XSL-rendered view, as well as in a view with XML tags shown.

• Element commands:� Insert, Delete, Rename, Split, Join, Element Attributes, Tag Region, Un-tag Element.

• Element Navigation.�

  • Next/Previous Element, Start/End of Line, Element Start/End, Next Choose element.

  • Navigation can be done via ContentMap pane.

• Context indication.� Floating context hints indicate current editing position in WYSIWYG mode. Current element and entity context is also shown on the status bar.

• Selection commands.� Navigation commands combined with Shift select appropriate area. Explicit selection commands are also available: Select/Deselect Parent (on multiple levels), Select Element Content.

• Two-mode selection.� Unbalanced mode: content is selected exactly within the selection boundaries. Balanced mode : cross-element selection is automatically adjusted to element boundaries.

• Text content editing.� XSL-FO whitespace (newline/blank) handling policies are fully supported. In whitespace-preserved areas Enter inserts new line, while in other places it splits current element.

• Custom content insertion.� The ability to create commands/buttons that insert content produced from customizable and context-sensitive templates. For example, insert "graphics", "emphasis", and, depending on the current cursor position, "itemizedlist" or "listitem".

• Drag & Drop Editing with On-the-fly Validation.� Drag selected portions of the document to copy or paste them into another location. Serna indicates where you can perform drop according to schema. Drag&Drop is also supported between ContentMap and Editing Window.

• Advanced find and replace.� Search and replace not only text, but also attribute names, attribute values, and text within comments. Searches by XSLT match patterns.

• Advanced element splitting.� Hitting Enter several times in a row splits element, then its parent, its next parent, etc. Useful for working with itemizedlists.

• PIs and comments.� PIs and XML comments are represented as icons in a rendered document, and can be changed in-place. Representation of PI/comment may be controlled by the stylesheet.

• Commenting-out/Uncommenting.� It's possible to comment out the selection and uncomment commented parts of a document.

• Graphic formats supported.� JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG, XBM, XPM, PNM, TIF, PBM, PGM, PPM. Plugins for SVG, CGM are available on request (require Adobe SVG or FreeCGM Viewer, respectively).

• Undo.� It is possible to set maximum undo stack depth to limit memory consumption.

• Advanced Insert Symbol Dialog.� The dialog allows user to visually pick UNICODE symbols from system installed fonts. User may form her own "favourite symbol" list in the dialog.

• XML namespace colors.� In Markup mode element tags from different namespaces may have different colors.

• Edit selection as text.� Select some portion of a document, edit it as XML source and insert back into the document.

• Internal and external entities.� Both internal and external entities are fully supported.

• XInclude support.� The most essential XInclude features are supported. You can also Xinclude file as a text or as an XML document.

• Partial document inclusion.� It is possible to include only a fragment of a document from the element, referenced by ID.

• In-place entity/XInclude editing.� All entities/xincludes are edited in-place. There's no need to open separate windows to edit entities or included documents.

• Visual boundaries.� Entity and XInclude boundaries are shown visually. There are different icons for external and internal entities. Visual entity boundaries are controlled by the stylesheet, and may be omitted.

• Instant content synchronization.� When editing entity/xinclude which has multiple references (inserted to document several times), changes are propagated with immediate visual feedback to all occurrences.

• Entity insertion.� List of declared entities is provided. When inserting an undeclared external entity, appropriate declaration is created automatically.

• Selection-based entity operations.� Managing entities is a breeze with Convert To Entity/Convert From Entity operations. which act upon a selected region of a document.

• Entity declaration management.� There is Entity Declarations dialog, which provides full control over entity declarations.

• Convert to XInclude.� Convert selection to an XInclude.

• XML Schema based.� Serna validator is W3C XML Schema conforming. When reading a document Serna also validates against the specified DTD. Schemas can be generated from DTD's automatically using Syntext DTD2XS tool which is free for Serna customers.

• On-the-fly validation.� Validation is performed on every document operation on-the-fly.

• Multiple validation modes ( strict , on , off ).� In Strict validation mode, changes which are not permitted by the XML Schema cannot be made.

• Context-specific element lists.� Validator provides valid element lists specific to the context, taking into consideration both context model and existing content (to handle cardinalities correctly).

• Context-specific attribute lists.� Validator provides lists of allowed attributes and possible attribute values for the context element. Additionally, attributes dialog provides lists of available IDs (for IDREF attributes) and allows you to browse for file name references.

• Automatic element content creation.� Validator automatically creates unambiguously required elements.

• Choose elements.� When some element is required, but there's more than one alternative, Serna shows Choose Element widget, which allows the user to see all ambiguities at once and resolve them interactively.

• Error navigation.� Validation errors are shown in a split pane. Error navigation can be done by clicking to error messages.

• Automatic clearance of validation errors.� If the cause of the error goes away, it is removed automatically from the message box.

• Explicit revalidation.� Besides dynamic validation, whole document can be revalidated explicitly with Revalidate command.

• Dialog box flexibility.� Most of the dialogs in Serna may be called on-demand as regular dialogs, docked to the main window sides, and also stay on-top as “ tool boxes ”.

• “ Liquid ” dialog boxes.� Some dialogs (Insert Element, Element Attributes, Find&Replace) change their shape depending on where they were docked. This “ liquid ” behaviour allows you to fit the dialog best to the dockable areas.

• GUI customisation tool.� It is possible to visually customize GUI with the Interface Customizer Dialog.

• Document-type specific GUI layout.� It is possible to save the customized GUI and associate it with a specific document type (e.g. Docbook or DITA). When user opens a document, the associated GUI layout comes up automatically.

• GUI I18n (Internationalization).� Serna GUI can be localized. Some non-English localizations are available out-of-the box.

• Immediate synchronization.�

  • Information in ContentMap is updated in sync with document authoring.

  • Selections in the ContentMap tree view are synchronized with the Editing Window.

  • Precise and intuitive indication of current cursor position, including positions between elements.

  • The current ContentMap element is highlighted. You always know where you are in the document.

• Drag&Drop with on-the-fly validation. Elements can be dragged to a different location with an icon that indicates if the drop is possible according to the schema.

• Direct manipulation with elements directly in ContentMap.�

• Advanced navigation.� Navigation is done by clicking elements on the ContentMap pane. When clicking on a ContentMap element multiple times, Serna will sequentially traverse all occurrences of the element within the document.

• Fully customizable.�

  • ContentMap is controlled by a separate XSLT stylesheet, which can be associated with the document type. Therefore ContentMap is tailorable for a particular document type.

  • Powerful style language which allows numbering, decorations, profiling, etc. in ContentMap.

  • Multiple profiled views in addition to full tree view (e.g. TOC profiled view).

• Automatic large document deduction.� Serna does its best to determine if the document being open is going to be large. If so, it can open the document collapsed, so that the user may work on a specific part of the document expanding it.

• Large document collapse list.� It is possible to specify for a particular document type what elements should be collapsed if the document is large.

• Large document element density and large document limit.� It is possible to specify for a particular document type how many elements per page the document usually contains, and after how many pages it is considered as large.

• Basic DITA support.�

  • Serna includes stylesheets for all out-of-the-box DITA V1.0 and V1.1 types, including topic, reference, concept, task, composite, glossary, map, bookmap.

  • DITA V1.1 documents are created with the xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation attribute, which allows Serna to determine DITA version correctly and permits processing of documents without DTD.

• Native specialization support.� Serna natively supports specialization (does not depend on element names) in stylesheets, DITA dialogs and for context-specific custom content insertion.

• On-the-fly conref and links resolution.�

  • Conrefs are processed on-the-fly. You can also switch to the document view showing unresolved conrefs as paths to target elements.

  • Links are processed on-the-fly. <xref> displays the title of the referred element instead of the ID.

• Reference navigation.� Serna allows you to navigate to the target of the xref , related link , topicref , and conref .

• Direct DITA maps editing.� Serna allows you to edit DITA maps directly. Besides, Serna provides DITA Map preview mode, when the whole map is composed in the Editing Window and all topic references are processed on-the-fly.

• DITA HTML and PDF publishing.� Serna uses DITA Open Toolkit 1.4 stylesheets for high-quality HTML and PDF publishing (publishing to PDF requires FOP or Antenna House XSL Formatter).

• DITA usability tools.� Serna provides a set of DITA-specific dialogs for additional convenience of inserting common DITA constructs like topics, conrefs, links, etc.

• DITA ID Management.� Serna maintains and validates the uniqueness of DITA elements' IDs within the scope of the parent topic.

• DITA Localization.� DITA Localization is identical to DITA OT. DITA localization can be switched on-the-fly from XSLT Parameter Sets.

• Redlining mark types.� There are thee mark types: inserted , deleted , commented .

• Element-independent redlining.� It is possible to redline several elements, text, and mixed content.

• Easy review tools.� There is a set of commands (e.g Accept Redlining , Reject Redlining ), that help to easily review document, and automatically move to the next annotated region.

• Element collapsing and expanding.� It is possible to expand and collapse the chosen element.

• Element collapsing list.� It is possible to specify the list of collapsible elements for the given document type. For example, setting collapsible element list to section and chapter allows the user to immediately collapse them if even the cursor is located within some deeply nested child element.

• Expanding and collapsing from ContentMap.� It is possible to collapse or expand an element from the document ContentMap view.

Configurable Document templates provide:

• Single-click document creation.� User may create document of appropriate type, stylesheet and schema applied, and even with pre-configured skeleton with just a single click.

• Automatic resolution of document type.� Most documents can be opened with a single click, because Serna automatically finds document template which matches the document, and applies appropriate schema, stylesheet, etc.

• Leading industrial DTD/Schema out-of-the box support.� Serna supports Docbook, Docbook Lite, TEI, DITA, XHTML, GCA proceedings, and NITF out-of-the-box.

• PI-based meta-information.� Document meta-information may also be specified in Serna-specific PIs, which do not affect other applications.

• XML-based format.� Document templates are specified in XML format. For convenience Serna includes stylesheet and Schema for creating and modifying document templates.

• Hiding extra elements and attributes from user.� Sometimes industrial DTDs are very large and confuse user working only on a minor use-case. It is possible to specify context, elements and attributes that should not be presented to user when inserting an element.

• Document template may include:� Public ID, System ID, document skeleton (for new documents), document type guess string, filename guess string, XSL stylesheet, XML schema, list of allowed root elements (constraining list provided by the validator), external publishing applications and stylesheet bindings, etc.

Spell checking is based on Aspell library, and supports all languages which are supported by Aspell (approximately 30 languages). However, only English is included in the distribution. Users may optionally download additional dictionaries.

• User-customizable dictionaries.� Users can create their own dictionaries (add words to dictionary) in the process of spell-checking.

• Element ignore.� Allows you to skip not just words, but the whole current element (which is useful for program listings, etc).

• Context-sensitive spelling language.� Spell checker changes the spelling dictionary automatically on the values of xml:lang and lang attributes.

• Built-in draft printing.� Document can be printed right from Serna exactly as it is appears on the screen. PostScript generation is also available on Linux.

• External publishing.� Serna may call external applications (such as XSL-FO formatters) for high-quality publishing.

• Out-of-the-box HTML publishing.� Libxslt Xsltproc XSLT processor is included in the distribution, which allows you to generate HTML (e.g. for Docbook documents) without additional efforts.

• Configuration packages.� It is possible to create configuration package with specific settings (e.g. XML catalog file list) and files (stylesheets, examples, etc), and then apply it for the whole enterprise.

• Installation and post-installation time configuration.� It is possible to apply the configuration settings at the time of installation and when the application is already installed.

• Multiple-document interface.� Ability to edit multiple documents at the same time and perform cross-document operations (e.g. cut&paste).

• Element Help.� Serna can show short help (tooltips) and long help for elements and attributes (available from main window, element and attribute dialogs). The full help is available for DITA and Docbook documents. It is possible to create your own help for your document types.

• XML catalog support.� Full conformance to OASIS Committee Specification 06 Aug 2001 .

• Autosave functionality.� Enabled autosave functionality allows you to automatically recover documents after occasional system crashes.

• Hot-key map.� A dialog that shows binding of the commands and the hot-keys.

• Text mode editing.� For the case when the document cannot be parsed or when advanced intervention required there is the text editing mode with XML syntax highlighting.

• Drag&drop.� Supports dragging file to Serna (Windows), supports copy&paste to/from external applications.

• Copy&Paste as XML and text.� It is possible to paste document portions as XML fragments, as well as pretty-indented text fragments.

• Zoom.� Supports document view zoom levels from 10% to 500%.

• Zoom adjustment.� It is also possible to automatically fit the width of the document to the current application window (fit width, fit height).

• UNICODE & encodings.� The editor is fully UNICODE-based, and supports more than 25 popular encodings.

• Force document linebreaks.� Force saving a document with or without the line-feeds.

• Multi-version support.� Multiple versions of Serna can now be installed. Versions that differ with last version number only (e.g 3.0.1 and 3.0.2) are installed into the same directory (upgraded) by default.

• Paginated and Normal document views.� The content of a document can be viewed on multiple pages or on a single page. By default, Docbook documents are opened paginated, and DITA documents are opened as a single page.

• SSL Support.� The SSL protocol support provides for secure communication between Serna and an SSL-enabled remote HTTP or WebDAV server.