What's New in TechWriter 2012

TechWriter 2012 includes the following new capabilities:

• Unified Application and Project Format
  Support for documenting databases, websites, web services and XML schemas has been unified into a single application and project file format.
   
• New Layout Engine
  The new layout engine is used by both the Annotation tab and the documentation build process, closing the WYSIWYG gap between authoring and final output and simplifying the annotation process.
   
• User-defined Annotations
  Support for an unlimited number of user-defined annotations at virtually every level of the documentation.
   
• User-defined Topics
  In addition to topics that are generated for databases, websites, web services and XML schemas, you can add user-defined topics.
   
• Customizable Layout of Generated Topics
  The new Option tab provides advanced settings for controlling the order of the sections within a topic, the order of columns within a table listing, and the width of columns within a table listing.
   
• New Import and Export Wizards
  These wizards give you better control over the import and export of annotations including the ability to filter what gets exported, merge annotations, and map to a different source during import.
   
• Filtering Improvements
  The Filters tab now supports editing existing filters and re-ordering filters.
   
• New Build Dialog
  The new Build dialog gives you better control over your build preferences.
   
• Support for Character Styles
  The output stylesheet now supports character style definitions that allow you to control how text is highlighted when it is marked up with a character style tag.
   
• Global Find Function
  The Find function can now search your entire project at once.
   
• Support for PostgreSQL and DB2
  PostgreSQL and DB2 databases can now be documented.
   
• Improved Microsoft Access Support
  In addition to supporting Access 2010, Access Forms, Report, Macros and Modules can now be documented.
   
• Improved Oracle Package Support
  TechWriter is now able to extract comments and definitions for stored procedures and functions located in packages.
   
• Improved SQL Server Support
  TechWriter is now able to extract definitions for stored procedures, functions, views and triggers even if they are encrypted.
   
• Colorize options for Database definitions
  Now you can colorize the definitions for stored procedures, functions, views and triggers, improving readability of your documentation.
   
• Support for nesting Local Element and Attribute Topics
  The Option tab now includes options for nesting local elements and attributes underneath the parent schema object.
   
• Colorize options for XML Schema definitions
  Now you can colorize the definitions for elements, attributes and types, improving readability of your documentation.
   
• Support for WADL
  Web Application Description Language (WADL) files can now be used to document your REST services.
   
• Improved REST support
  In addition to the new WADL source type, the REST source type has been enhanced to allow for more than one method to be defined in a single source.
   
• Web Service Method Parameter Handling Improvements
  Method parameter handling has been significantly improved to better handle different document/literal wrapping patterns.
   
• New Web Service Method Parameter Options
  New options give you the choice of a simple summary listing of parameters or a more detailed listing.
   
• Web Service can reference XML Schema Sources
  You now have the option to add any XML schemas that your web service imports as a separate source reducing duplicate topics in cases where you are documenting multiple web services.