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Screenshots

Jaxe

This screenshot shows the insertion panel on the left, the language menubar on top, and the XML area. XML elements are displayed in different ways, depending on what they represent: for instance, an element representing an image is displayed as the image itself.

An application using Jaxe, by Bodo Tasche

This second example shows Jaxe integrated inside another Java appliation, with custom element displays.

XML is a syntax, but it is mostly a philosophy in writing documents, which consists of describing the meaning in an explicit way as opposed to the presentation. One would write, for instance:

<TITLE>XML</TITLE>

instead of:

<BOLD><ITALIC><CENTER>XML</CENTER></ITALIC></BOLD>

This principle allows both automatic data processing (like the extraction of all the titles to build a table of contents), and the possibility to define several displays for the same content (like a web display and a paper display).

Since the content is well separated from the presentation, XML editors like Jaxe are not WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get"). People used to word processors like Word have to be careful not to use styles such as bold or italic when it is possible to convey the meaning of the content instead. It is also important to not rely on the preview because there can be several ways of displaying the content. It is better to use elements corresponding to paragraphs or sections rather than line break elements, because the space between paragraphs can depend on the display and be a little less or a little more than a line.

An XML language is defined formally, so that an automatic syntax check is possible. This formal description includes the names of the elements in the language, the allowed element nesting, the order of the elements and their attributes (attributes being optional or required).

Jaxe makes the creation of XML documents easier by using the language rules to suggest elements to insert wherever possible. This makes the creation of valid documents (i.e. conforming to the language rules) much easier than with a simple text editor. This introduction is general for all XML languages, but each end user has to learn one or more specific XML languages which are not detailed here.

On top of the files describing XML languages (the schemas), Jaxe uses configuration files to define the menubar and the way to display elements. These files are located in the config directory, and their names end with _config.xml.

Jaxe requires Java 1.5 or later. To know what version of Java is installed, type java -version in the command line.

Jaxe is launched in different ways depending on the OS. On MacOS, it is done with a double-click on the application, which is located in the Jaxe directory. On Windows, Jaxe is launched with the Jaxe.exe executable or with the run.bat script, and on UNIX with the run.sh script. These scripts can be modified to define a default configuration file.

On Windows it is possible to run the script assocXMLJaxe.bat to associate the ".xml" extension to Jaxe. This lets you open XML files directly by double-clicking on them. This script only works if you have the rights to change file associations, so you have to be an administrator.

On MacOS X you can choose Jaxe rather than another program to open an XML file with a double-click by choosing the "Get Info" menu for an XML file, choosing Jaxe in "Open with", and clicking on "Change all" so that all XML files open with it.

It is also possible to launch Jaxe with the scripts jaxe.bat and jaxe.sh, by adding the name of a file to open, for instance by typing ./jaxe.sh test.xml.

Jaxe loads XML files in memory, and it can be difficult when they contain lots of large images. It is possible to increase the memory alloted to Jaxe, depending on the OS:

• on Windows and UNIX, by modifying the file run.bat or run.sh: replace java by java -Xms128m -Xmx512m to specify 128 Mb of initial memory and allow a maximum of 512 Mb.
• on MacOS, edit Jaxe/Jaxe.app/Contents/Info.plist, and add the lines <key>VMOptions</key> and <string>-Xms=128m -Xmx=512m</string> after the lines <key>Java</key> and <dict>.

Jaxe uses by default the OS language, but in Jaxe 3.4 only French, English, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Spanish have been defined. If the OS is using another language, Jaxe is using French. To change the language used, just add the option -Duser.language=xx after the command java in the scripts, or as the value for the Info.plist key VMOptions on MacOS X. xx is a code corresponding to the language, for instance en for English.

Jaxe has a specific equation editor, to add and change equations. An equation is edited in a text area, while the corresponding image is displayed above in real time. The equation images are saved in a folder called equations_myfile within the folder of the XML file myfile.xml.

This editor does not pretend to be exhaustive. Complex equations can be created with another editor and added in Jaxe with a copy-paste.

• Addition and subtraction

  Operators '+' and '-'.

• Multiplication

  Operator '*', displayed only when two numbers are multiplied.

  Example : 2*3*sin(1.5*pi) is displayed :

• Division

  Operator '/' (displayed as a fraction) and functions 'slash' and 'fraction'

  Example : slash(a;b)/c is displayed :

• Function

  The parameter separator is the semicolon, to distinguish it from the coma, sometimes used in numbers : functionname(arg1;arg2;...)

  Example : f(x;y) is displayed :

• Power

  Operator '^'.

  Example : x^y is displayed :

• Subscript

  Operator '_'.

  Example : x_(ab) is displayed :

• Subscript superscript

  Function 'subsup' with the first term, and the elements to display as subscript and superscript.

  Example : subsup(A;1;2) is displayed :

• Square root

  Function 'sqrt'.

  Example : sqrt(x/2) is displayed :

• Root

  Function 'root' with the degree of the root as the second parameter.

  Example : root(x;3) is displayed :

• Absolute values

  Function 'abs'.

  Example : abs(x^3) is displayed :

• Power of e

  Function 'exp'.

  Example : exp(x^2) is displayed :

• Integral

  Function 'int', with 4 parameters: the function to integrate, the integration variable, and the minimum and maximum bounds.

  Example : int(f(x);x;0;infty) is displayed :

• Sum and product

  Functions 'sum' and 'prod', with 3 parameters: the function to sum up, and the minimum and maximum bounds.

  Example : sum(ln(k)/k;k=1;10) is displayed :

• Matrix

  Function 'matrix', with the lines as parameter as a function 'line'.

  Example : matrix(line(1;2;3);line(4;5;6)) is displayed :

• Greek letters

  Variables with the letter name, with an uppercase to the first character of the name to get an uppercase Greek letter.

  Example : alpha*Delta*thetasym*upsih*piv is displayed :

• Special characters

  Variable with the name of the special character.

  sun|star|earth|planck|infin|angstrom|ell|hat|bar|asterisk|bigg|...

  Example : M_sun/M_earth=3.329*10^5 is displayed :

• Special operators

  Special code with no space.

  !=|~=|<=|>=|<<|>>|->|forall|exists|part|nabla|prop|cross|plusminus|cap|cup

  Example : forall a exists b<<c~=d>=e!=f is displayed :

• Accents

  Function 'accent' with the letter and the accent to add above.

  Example : accent(AB;->)+accent(ABC;hat)+accent(x;bar) is displayed :

• Time derivatives

  Function 'timed' with the variable and the number of dots to display above.

  Example : timed(theta;2) is displayed :

• Vectors

  Function 'vector' with the name of the vector.

  Example : vector(u_theta) is displayed :

• Scalar product

  Function 'scalarp' with the two vectors as parameters.

  Example : scalarp(vector(AB);vector(CD)) is displayed :

• Norm

  Function 'norm' with the vector as a parameter.

  Example : norm(vector(AB)) is displayed :

• Functions with no parenthesis

  Some functions are displayed without parenthesis when they have a single parameter with a variable.

  Example : sin(a)*sin(b) is displayed :

• Equation system

  Function 'system', with the lines as parameters.

  Example : system(x+y=2;x-2*y=3) is displayed :

• Units

  Function 'unit', with the unit as the second parameter.

  Example : bigg=unit(6.67259*10^(-11);m^3*kg^(-1)*s^(-2)) is displayed :

  Note that units are displayed with a plain font, while a variable like is displayed with an italic font.

• Factorials

  Function 'fact'.

  Example : fact(x) is displayed :

• Mean

  Function 'mean'.

  Example : mean(M_B) is displayed :

This editor is used to create a Jaxe's config file to define an environment to edit XML elements. Using its simplified GUI, the user can easily create or edit config files.

Initial menu

Open a config file

New: create a new config file

Open: open and edit an existing config file. Go to main menu .

Exit: exit the application

Set one or several languages

Add a language

Language list

You must add at least one language !

Schema choice

Selection of a xml schema in the config directory

Choose a W3C schema, select the schema file in your config directory.

Choice of one or several root elements

The list on the left represents the elements which may be root elements. Select one and add it to the list of roots. Don't forget to commit the changes by clicking the OK button.

When opening an existing configuration file, you will see the existing roots in the list of roots.

It is necessary to give Jaxe one or several possible root elements to use for new documents.

Main menu

The main menu provides access to different parts of the editor:

• Root : Choice the possible roots in the config file
• Other configuration : Included Jaxe configuration
• File saving options : Edit the file saving options
• Menus Editor : Edit the menus, insertion menu and function menu
• Elements Editor : Edit node display
• Exports Editor : Edit exports
• General Texts Editor : Edit strings

Choice of another configuration file

Another Jaxe configuration, to include another one in this config.

Create a new menu

Create a new menu

Add an insertion menu

Create a new function menu

Create a new function menu

Edit the menu strings

Edit the insertion menu strings

Menus defined in config files are displayed above Jaxe's text area. They are not mixed with Jaxe's menubar, which is above (on top of the screen on Macs).

Edit of selected element

Edit the element strings

Filter the list of elements

Suggest attribute values

Display parameter

Edit the attribute strings

An essential feature in Jaxe is the possibility to display and edit XML elements in different ways, whatever their types in the XML schema. For instance, a table element can be displayed as a table, and an element linking to an image can be displayed as an image. The goal is to ease document editing, without losing of sight the semantics : elements will not be displayed as they will be seen in web pages or PDF documents, but simply with a user interface making edition easier and highlighting the meaning of the elements.

Type	Description	Display
division	Two bars extending to the window's right side, clearly separating large areas in the document.
area	Two tags and carriage returns, to separate areas smaller than with division.
string	Two tags to identify a small string, without any carriage return.
empty	A single tag, typically for an empty element.
table	Spreadsheet style table display (with the Swing component JTable). Handy for tables of numbers, but does not allow the use of XML elements inside the cells (use text table to do that).
text table	Table display allowing the use of XML elements inside the cells. Also handles the rowspan and colspan attributes to gather cells vertically and horizontally.
style	For use in the case (very rare if the XML language encodes the meaning as opposed to the presentation) where an XML element only conveys a style information. Displays the characters in the chosen style (bold, italic, ...), without any tag. An alternative is to use the string type, which can also use a style, but displays the tags.
file	Displays an image based on its path on the disk coming from an attribute of the XML element (to be defined). It is possible to copy/paste images and Jaxe will automatically create the XML element and the image file on the disk, using the first element of type file.
symbol	Displays an image chosen within a set of images in an image folder.
list	For an element representing a bulleted or ordered list. The sub-element must use the item type. The tags are displayed as for area, with a '+' button to create new items.
item	List item in a list displayed with the list type. Displayed with bullets or numbers, depending on the list type.
simple type	Displays an element having a simple value, in a small panel. Usable only for the elements with a simple type in the XML schema. The precise display (text field, menu or checkbox) and the validation are done based on the XML schema constraints.
equation	Displays the image of an equation. The equation can be edited by a simple click on the image, with a dialog showing at the same time the text of the equation (using a very simple syntax specific to Jaxe) and the corresponding image.
form	Displays an element and all its sub-elements as a form, with a field for each sub-element. Beware not to use this type with elements that could have an infinitely deep subtree !
plugin	If you want to define your own Jaxe element, it is possible ! See the section "Creation of new Jaxe elements" in the developer guide for more information.

Parameters can be specified for some display types, with the Parameter element under Element display.

Display types division and area can have a parameter specifying the name of the attribute to use as a title for the element display.

Display types file and symbol must have a parameter specifying the attribute with the file name.

Display types table and text table must have parameters specifying the elements for the rows and the cells.

Display types style must have a parameter specifying the style.

Display types area and string can have a parameter specifying the style, a parameter with the font family, and a parameter with the font size.

Display types equation must have parameters specifying the attributes to use for the equation text and the image filename.

Here is a list of all the parameters:

Edit a menu strings

Edit an element strings

Editer an export strings

Add language

Edit the strings for a set of languages

All the texts (also called strings) may have to be changed in the interface created with the configuration. Either to improve readability without having to change the schema, or to provide an interface in another natural language for the same schema. Texts may also have to be provided for a set of languages, so that users can edit the same documents, with the same Jaxe configuration, but with an interface entirely in their native language.

• You can add a language by clicking on Add. The language is added with the same menus as other languages. You can simply translate.
• To remove a language, select it and click on Remove.

Save the XML file

Save the schema path

Schema path saving

Click on Save and choose your config directory path. Enter the file name (without _config, or .xml extension)

A dialog asks you to save the schema path. The config file and the W3C schema must be in the same directory.

If you exit without saving your XML file, a dialog will suggest to do it.

When creating a new document with Jaxe, it is necessary to choose a config file.

Jaxe's config files are used to specify the GUI to edit XML documents with Jaxe, for a given XML language. This covers informations about the XML language, saving options, menus (especially to insert the elements), display types for the elements, possible exports, and all the strings used in the interface, depending on the user language.

Config files are located in Jaxe's config directory, and their names end with "_config.xml". Old Jaxe config files (before Jaxe 3.0) had a name ending with "_Jaxe_cfg.xml". They can be converted to the new version with an export menu in the File menu.

It is possible to open an XML schema with Jaxe and to "export" to a config file. This automatically creates a config file that will make edition in Jaxe possible for the schema, but the automatic guesses for the display types are often bad or insufficient : this export should not be considered a method to create config files, but it could be used to start the creation of a config file from a particularly complex schema.

Menus defined in config files are displayed above Jaxe's text area. They are not mixed with Jaxe's menubar, which is above (on top of the screen on Macs).

An essential feature in Jaxe is the possibility to display and edit XML element in different ways, whatever their types in the XML schema. For instance, a table element can be displayed as a table, and an element linking to an image can be displayed as an image. The objective is to ease document editing, without losing of sight their semantics : elements will not be displayed as they will be seen in web pages or PDF documents, but simply with a user interface making edition easier and highlighting the meaning of the elements.

Type	Description	Display
division	Two bars extending to the window's right side, clearly separating large areas in the document.
area	Two tags and carriage returns, to separate areas smaller than with division.
string	Two tags to identify a small string, without any carriage return.
empty	A single tag, typically for an empty element.
table	Spreadsheet style table display (with the Swing component JTable). Handy for tables of numbers, but does not allow the use of XML elements inside the cells (use text table to do that).
text table	Table display allowing the use of XML elements inside the cells. Also handles the rowspan and colspan attributes to gather cells vertically and horizontally.
style	For use in the case (very rare if the XML language encodes the meaning as opposed to the presentation) where an XML element only conveys a style information. Displays the characters in the chosen style (bold, italic, ...), without any tag. An alternative is to use the string type, which can also use a style, but displays the tags.
file	Displays an image based on its path on the disk coming from an attribute of the XML element (to be defined). It is possible to copy/paste images and Jaxe will automatically create the XML element and the image file on the disk, using the first element of type file.
symbol	Displays an image chosen within a set of images in an image folder.
list	For an element representing a bulleted or ordered list. The sub-element must use the item type. The tags are displayed as for area, with a '+' button to create new items.
item	List item in a list displayed with the list type. Displayed with bullets or numbers, depending on the list type.
simple type	Displays an element having a simple value, in a small panel. Usable only for the elements with a simple type in the XML schema. The precise display (text field, menu or checkbox) and the validation are done based on the XML schema constraints.
equation	Displays the image of an equation. The equation can be edited by a simple click on the image, with a dialog showing at the same time the text of the equation (using a very simple syntax specific to Jaxe) and the corresponding image.
form	Displays an element and all its sub-elements as a form, with a field for each sub-element. Beware not to use this type with elements that could have an infinitely deep subtree !
plugin	If you want to define your own Jaxe element, it is possible ! See the section "Creation of new Jaxe elements" in the developer guide for more information.

Parameters can be specified for some display types, with the Parameter element under Element display.

Display types division and area can have a parameter specifying the name of the attribute to use as a title for the element display.

Display types file and symbol must have a parameter specifying the attribute with the file name.

Display types table and text table must have parameters specifying the elements for the rows and the cells.

Display types style must have a parameter specifying the style.

Display types area and string can have a parameter specifying the style, a parameter with the font family, and a parameter with the font size.

Display types equation must have parameters specifying the attributes to use for the equation text and the image filename.

Here is a list of all the parameters:

All the texts (also called strings) may have to be changed in the interface created with the configuration. Either to improve readability without having to change the schema, or to provide an interface in another natural language for the same schema. Texts may also have to be provided for a set of languages, so that users can edit the same documents, with the same Jaxe configuration, but with an interface entirely in their native language.

For these reasons, the Strings element represents a set of strings for a given language and country, and it is possible to specify several in the same config file. On can use for instance language="pt" country="BR" for Brazilian Portuguese, or just language="en" so specify English without any precision about the country.

You may have noticed that the real config file XML elements have French names, even though you see them in English in Jaxe and in this documentation. This is because the config file for config files is using these Strings elements to define titles to use for elements when the user's system language is English.

Although Jaxe has been localised to English, most of the source code is using French, and most comments, variables, methods, and classes are in French. So, knowing French can be useful to develop with Jaxe, but it is not necessary in most cases, since you can just follow the following recipes. Also, most CVS update comments on sourceforge are in English, so it's also useful to know English. But the language you really have to know is of course Java !

It will be assumed that the reader has already read the documentations for users, administrators and the syntax for configuration files.

This documentation explains how to use Jaxe within another application, and how to add plugins to display elements.

Jaxe's startup class is (unsurprisingly) jaxe.Jaxe. This class gathers external events handling (file opening, closing, etc...), so it can be useful to take a look at it to see how a new Jaxe document is created or opened.

Another important class is jaxe.JaxeFrame. This class relates to an XML document window. It is using the class jaxe.JaxeMenuBar to handle the menubar, this one being unfortunately (because of a shortcoming of Java) linked to the window.

The easiest way to include Jaxe in another application is probably to use the class jaxe.JaxeTextPane, which represents the text area in the XML window. Since this class is derived from java.swing.JTextPane, it can easily be added wherever required, according to the host application layout. The constructor requires a JaxeDocument (linked to the DOM) and a JFrame (the parent window).

The object of class jaxe.JaxeDocument has to be initialised with a Jaxe configuration file (handled by the class jaxe.Config) and possibly with an XML file or with a DOM object.

To sum up, here is a list of instructions to include a Jaxe text area in a parent Container located in a given frame:

JaxeDocument jaxeDoc = new JaxeDocument("mylanguage_config.xml");
JaxeTextPane jaxeTextPane = new JaxeTextPane(jaxeDoc, frame);
jaxeDoc.lire(xmlFileURL);
// or jaxeDoc.setDOMDoc(domDocument);
parent.add(jaxeTextPane);

Elements can be inserted with the contextual menu, or with jaxe.ActionInsertionBalise actions. The constructor for ActionInsertionBalise requires the Jaxe document, and the DOM element corresponding to the definition of the element in the Jaxe configuration file.

The document can later be saved with the method JaxeDocument.ecrire(File f).

A Jaxe element is a class derived from jaxe.JaxeElement, describing a display for a given XML element. Standard Jaxe elements are gathered in the jaxe.elements package. They correspond to display types in the configuration files (for instance, the type string corresponds to the Jaxe element jaxe.elements.JEString).

A new Jaxe element can be created by deriving a new class from jaxe.JaxeElement. It can then be used in a configuration file with the plugin type, with the class to be used:

<AFFICHAGE_ELEMENT element="aBooleanElement" type="plugin">
  <PARAMETRE nom="classe" valeur="JEBoolean"/>
</AFFICHAGE_ELEMENT>

Two methods must be defined in the Jaxe element: init and nouvelElement. Two other ones are only useful if starting and ending tags are used (as explained later): insPosition, and (if the element has attributes) majAffichage.

init is used for initialisation and to insert the Swing component in the text area. The parameters are the position where the element has to be inserted in the text, and the DOM node. Using these parameters, the component has to be inserted with the method JaxeElement.insertComponent(Position pos, JComponent comp).

It gets trickier if we want to use a component as a start tag and a component as an end tag, letting Jaxe handle recursively the descendants. The position in the text after the insertion of the start tag has to be obtained (it is returned by insertComponent), descendants have to be added with creerEnfants(Position), and the end tag has to be inserted with a new call to insertComponent (with the Position objects passed as a parameter to creerEnfants. The character style has then to be updated for the tags and the descendants, which means the start position had to be kept before the first insertComponent. Here is an example:

int startOffset = pos.getOffset();
Position newpos = insertComponent(pos, startTagComponent);
creerEnfants(newpos);
insertComponent(newpos, endTagComponent);
if (newpos.getOffset() - startOffset - 1 > 0) {
  SimpleAttributeSet style = attStyle(null);
  if (style != null)
    doc.setCharacterAttributes(startOffset, newpos.getOffset() - startOffset - 1, style, false);
}

The method nouvelElement is called when the user inserts a new element. It might have to ask for informations to the user (such as the attributes), and has to return the new DOM element. The dialog jaxe.DialogueAttributs can be used to ask for attribute values.

insPosition can be called to get the position where the cursor will be placed after the insertion of a new element. By default, the cursor is placed after the element, but it can be useful to place it between the start and end tags when they are used.

Finally, majAffichage is called to update the display when the attributes values have been changed in the attribute panel.

It is easy to add a menu launching a particular function instead of inserting an element. For this, one just needs to derive a class from jaxe.Fonction and implement the method appliquer, which provides the working Jaxe document, and the starting and ending positions of the text selection.

public void appliquer(JaxeDocument doc, int start, int end)

The DOM document can be obtained from the Jaxe document with doc.DOMdoc. A Jaxe element can be obtained from a position in the text with doc.elementA(int pos). All the elements in the interval [start,end] can be obtained with rootJE.elementsDans(start, end). The corresponding DOM node is obtained with JaxeElement.noeud.

<MENU nom="plugins">
  <MENU_FONCTION classe="pluginsjaxe.StatisticsFunction" nom="Statistics"/>
</MENU>

XPAGES documents have a root element, XPAGES set, that is used in all the documents as a first level element. Under this element, the following elements can be found : Informations, Page, Ref. XPAGES document and XPAGES set.

• Informations is a metadata block, i.e. informations about the document. It is described later on.
• Page represents a web page, and has a title and a label used to create links to the page.
• Ref. XPAGES document is a reference (via the label) to another XPAGES document, that will be included in place of the Ref. XPAGES document element. This is used to create a website with several levels : for instance, one can create a website with a home page, and several sets of pages. To do that, an XPAGES document is created for the website, containing the home page and Ref. XPAGES document references to the different sets of pages in the website.
• XPAGES set under XPAGES set can be used to add another level to the tree, as with REFXPAGES, but without creating a new document.

Inside a page, sections can be created with the Section element. This element has a title, a role that specifies the meaning of the section and can result in a different display for each function, and an importance that can be used to highlight the section if it is important.

The text is added inside paragraphs, with the Paragraph element. It is easy to insert a new paragraph with the command-P or control-P shortcut in Jaxe.

It is possible to create several contributions, each one containing an XPAGES XML file and the associated files (images, Java applets, ...). Each contribution corresponds to a folder whose name is the same as the label given in the Informations block in the XML file. This folder contains the XML file and the associated files.

The information block provides information about the document, and is also used to choose a skin for the generated website. It is required, and is located at the beginning of the document. It has the following children :

• Label  : a name used later to reference the document with the Ref. XPAGES document element, to include the content of the document in a larger one. The label is required, and must match the name of the XML file without the ".xml" extension. In WebJaxe, this label must simply be the name of the contribution.
• Title  : the document title (required).
• Author  : an author of the document. It is of course possible to specify several authors.
• Author  : the creation date of the document, with the syntax DD/MM/YYYY.
• Update date  : the update date of the document, with the syntax DD/MM/YYYY.
• Logo  : path to an image file with a logo to use on the website. The image must be in a standard format for the web (JPEG, PNG or GIF). It is possible to specify a link to use when the logo is clicked.
• Interface  : choice of a skin for the pages.
• Menubar  : to choose whether or not to display the buttons on top of web pages to navigate to the subsets referenced with REFXPAGES.
• Language  : the code for the document language (en for English).

XPAGES has the following block elements :

• Section  : used to identify an area inside a page, with a title, a semantic role, and an importance. The role is optional, but is important to give meaning to the different parts of the document. It can also be used later to display sections with the same role in a similar way, to visually distinguish them from other sections.
• Paragraph  : a paragraph is one or several sentences. To do a "line break" (this idea is quoted because it is related to presentation instead of content), it is necessary to create a new paragraph.
• List  : a list of List item elements. Items can contain text, but also paragraphs or sublists.
• Table  : a table is formed with a given number of lines and columns. It is possible to specify a line of titles (the first line of the table). Also, cells can be merged, and an alignment can be specified inside the cells.
• Image environment  : an element grouping the informations related to an image (copyright and legend), and a link to the image file. It is also possible to create a link on the image, so that a click on it redirects to another part of the site or an external page.
• Java applet  : a Java applet, for instance for interactive simulations.
• Flash object  : a Flash object, that can also be used to add interactivity to the website.
• Comment  : a comment of the author, that will not be displayed on the website. Very useful for instance to mark parts to develop or correct at the time of writing.
• Code  : a block of computer code whose formatting must be preserved.
• Exercise  : an exercise (see later).
• Quiz  : a quiz (see later).
• Bibliography  : a list of bibliographic and webographic references.

Some XPAGES elements can be mixed with text, for instance inside a paragraph. They are the following elements :

• Link to internal page  : link to a page on the same website. To identify the page to link to, the label of the contribution and the label of the page have to be entered. If only the label of the page is given, it is assumed to be in the same contribution. If only the label of the contribution is given, the link directs to the first page in this contribution.
• External link  : link to a web page external to the website. The address (URL) must start with "http://".
• File  : an image or animation file. Normally used inside an Image environment element, so that a legend can be specified, but it can also be used within the text (for instance to include a symbol that could not be created with an equation).
• Symbol  : greek letter or mathematical symbol.
• Equation  : equation based on Jaxe's equation editor syntax.
• TeX Equation  : equation based on the TeX syntax.
• Glossary word  : word to include in the glossary. The word to display is specified with the word attribute, and the definition for the word is given within the Glossary word tags.
• Emphasis  : emphasis (to highlight one or several words).
• Superscript  : superscript text
• Subscript  : subscript text
• Code  : computer science code (usually displayed with a monospaced font)
• Non-breaking space  : non-breaking space

XPAGES can be used for many applications, but it is especially handy to create online courses, and was created in this context. For these reasons, the language contains elements specific to the definition of exercises, even though these elements might not be useful outside of the context of online courses.

There are two types of exercises : the question-answer type (Exercise element), and the quiz type (Quiz element). In both cases, an exercise can have a title (title attribute), an indication of the difficulty (Difficulty element), an indication of the time necessary to complete the exercise (Time element), and questions (Question and Quiz question elements).

Each question can have terms (Terms element) and one or more helps (Help element). Questions of type question-answer have a solution (Solution element) and a number of points that can be granted if the answer is correct (Points element). Questions of the quiz type have possible answers (Quiz answer element), each answer being either right or wrong (correct attribute), with the text of the answer (Answer text element) and a comment which will be displayed to the user should he choose this answer, for instance to explain why the answer is wrong (Answer comment element).

In Jaxe, solutions for evaluation exercises are not added to HTML when the "public website" is generated. They are added when the "production website" is created. WebJaxe always creates the production website. To create a public website from a contribution in WebJaxe, the contribution has to be exported and opened with Jaxe. In this way, it is possible to create, from the same XML files, a website for students, and another one for tutors for an elearning program.