Edit online

Author Preferences

Oxygen XML Author provides an Author editing mode that provides a configurable graphical interface for editing documents. To configure the options for the Author mode, open the Preferences dialog box (Options > Preferences) and go to Editor > Edit modes > Author.

The following options are available:

Author default background color: Sets the default background color of the Author editing mode. The background-color property set in the CSS file associated with the currently edited document overwrites this option.
Author default foreground color: Sets the default foreground color of the Author editing mode. The color property set in the CSS file associated with the currently edited document overwrites this option.
Show XML comments: When this option is selected, XML comments are displayed in Author mode. Otherwise, they are hidden.
Show placeholders for empty elements: When this option is selected, placeholders are displayed for elements with no content to make them clearly visible. The placeholder is rendered as a light gray box and displays the element name.
Show processing instructions: When this option is selected, XML processing instructions are displayed in Author mode. Otherwise, they are hidden.
Show Author layout messages: When this option is selected, all errors reported while rendering the document in Author mode are presented in the Results panel at the bottom of the editor.
Show doctype: When this option is selected, the doctype declaration is displayed in Author mode. Otherwise, it is hidden.
Show block range: When this option is selected, a block range indicator is displayed in a stripe located in the left side of the editor. It is displayed as a heavy line that spans from the first line to the last line of the block.
Fast text layout: In certain cases, the widths computed in the Author visual editing mode for lines of text may be larger than expected, leading to an incorrect visual layout. Deactivating this option will improve the computation quality for character widths in the visual editing mode, but it may hinder overall performance for very large documents.
Tip: For macOS users, some specific examples of this type of situation can be found here: Text Rendering Issues on macOS. Because of such problems, when an installation kit with Java 9 or newer is used on macOS, the checkbox is not selected by default.
Show floating contextual toolbar: When this option is selected (default), the floating contextual toolbar is displayed in the Author mode in certain situations. When not selected, the floating contextual toolbar is never displayed.

Images Section

The following options regarding images in Author mode are available in this section:

Auto-scale images wider than (pixels): Sets the maximum width that an image will be displayed. Wider images will be scaled to fit.
Show very large images: When this option is selected, images larger than 6 megapixels are displayed in Author mode. Otherwise, they are not displayed.
Important: If you select this option and your document contains many such images, Oxygen XML Author may consume all available memory, throwing an OutOfMemory error. To resolve this, increase the available memory limit and restart the application.

Tags Section

In this section, you can configure the following options regarding tags that are displayed in Author mode:

Tags display mode

Sets the default display mode for element tags presented in Author mode. You can choose between the following:

Full Tags with Attributes: Displays full tag names with attributes for both block and inline elements.Oxygen XML Author
Full Tags: Displays full tag names without attributes for both block elements and inline elements.
Block Tags: Displays full tag names for block elements and simple tags without names for inline elements.
Block Tags without Element Names: Displays tags for block elements but without element names for a more compact version of Block Tags mode. You can still see the element names by hovering over the tags.
Inline Tags: Displays full tag names for inline elements, while block elements are not displayed.
Partial Tags: Displays simple tags without names for inline elements, while block elements are not displayed.
No Tags: No tags are displayed. This is the most compact mode and is as close as possible to a word-processor view.

Sort attributes alphabetically for "Full Tags with Attributes"

When selected, if you choose

Full Tags with Attributes for the Tags Display Mode, the attributes will be displayed in alphabetical order. Otherwise, they are displayed in the order that they appear in the XML source code.

Tags background color

Sets the Author mode tags background color.

Tags foreground color

Sets the Author mode tags foreground color.

Tags font

Allows you to change the font used to display tags text in the Author visual editing mode. The default font is computed based on the setting of the Author default font option in the Fonts preferences page.

Compact tag layout

If this option is not selected, the Author mode displays the tags in a more decompressed layout, where block tags are displayed on separate lines.

References Section

Display referenced content (external entities, XInclude, DITA conref, etc.)

When selected, the references (such as external entities, XInclude, DITA conrefs) also display the content of the resources they reference. When the option is not selected, the referenced resources are not automatically loaded and displayed, but the referenced content can be expanded on demand by using the small expansion button located next to each element that contains references. If you toggle this option while editing, you need to reload the file for the modification to take effect.

Allow referenced content to be edited

When selected, for a specific XML vocabulary that supports this feature, the content referenced from other files and presented in the Author visual editing mode can be edited in-place and saved. For now, if the feature is enabled and you use the

Open Map in Editor with Resolved Topics toolbar action in the DITA Maps Manager view, the referenced content in the opened document becomes editable in-place. Saving the document will save all other modified topics.

Local files only: When selected (default), the Allow referenced content to be edited (Experimental) option only works for local files. For files located in remote locations such as a CMS, additional steps might be necessary to save all modified content because this feature might not function properly with remote resources.

For advanced Author configuration see the Document Type Association settings

Click this link to open the Document Type Association preferences page.