Serna Free is an Open Source XML editor now

Advanced XML Editing in Syntext Serna

Advanced XML editing features of Syntext Serna XML editor allow you to significantly speed up XML content authoring process.


  • Two-mode selection.
    • Unbalanced mode: content is selected exactly within the selection boundaries.
    • Balanced mode: cross-element selection is automatically adjusted to element boundaries.
  • Drag-and-drop from Microsoft® Office Word and web browsers. Copy content from Microsoft® Office Word or a web browser window into a DITA document. The content, including images and tables, will be automatically converted to valid XML structures.
  • Advanced element splitting. Hitting Enter several times in a row splits the element, then its parent, its next parent, etc. Useful for working with itemizedlists.
  • Advanced Find and Replace. Serna lets you quickly find or find&replace any text that occurs not only in document content, but also in a comment, or in the name or value of an attribute. You can also search for elements that satisfy specific conditions using XSLT match patterns.
  • Custom content insertion. The ability to quickly insert the most frequently used constructs such as graphics, emphasis, paragraphs, notes, lists, and others by using customizable and context-sensitive templates. You can use the ready-made custom content predefined for different types of XML documents or create your own one.
  • Advanced Insert Symbol Dialog. The dialog allows the user to visually pick UNICODE symbols from system installed fonts and add the most frequently used symbols to the favourite symbol list.
  • Edit selection as text. Select some portion of a document, edit it as XML source and insert back into the document.
  • Table support (XSL FO, CALS, HTML).
  • 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 a selection and uncomment commented parts of a document.
  • Undo. It is possible to set the maximum undo stack depth to limit memory consumption.