Using the Project view

The Project view, located on the left-hand side of the main window, is designed to assist the user in organizing and managing related files grouped in the same XML project. The actions available on the context menu and toolbar associated to this panel enable the creation of XML projects and shortcuts to various operations on the project documents.

 

Figure 4.38. The Project view

The Project view

The default layout initialized by the Perspective->Reset Layout menu item arranges the Project view on the left side of the <oXygen/> window, above the Outline view. If you closed the view at some time to get more editing space you can reopen it quickly at any time with the Project->Show Project View menu item.

To create a new project select File->New Project or click the toolbar button New Project

To open an existing project select File->Open Project ... (Ctrl+F2) or click the toolbar button Open Project or select File->Reopen Project (displays a list of recently opened project files, select a project file to open).

To save a project on disk select File->Save Project (Ctrl+F3) or click the toolbar button Save Project

The files are organized in a XML project usually as a collection of folders. There are two types of folders:

To create a new logical folder select in the contextual menu New Folder or Import Folders or Import Remote Folders or click the Project view toolbar button New Folder

You can create linked folders by dragging and dropping a folder from the Windows Explorer / Mac OS X Finder over the project tree or by selecting in the contextual menu Link to External Folders However you cannot drag and drop other files or folders over a linked folder.

To add one or more files to a folder, right click on it, and choose Add files or Add Edited File or click the toolbar button Add Edited File or right-click on the title of an opened editor and select from the pop-up menu Add to project or Add all to project.

The default target when adding files to a project is the project root. Selecting a folder changes the target to the selected folder. Files may have multiple instances, within the folder system but cannot appear twice within the same folder.

To remove one or more files and/or folders select them with the mouse in the project tree, right-click to invoke the contextual menu and select the Remove action or press the DELETE key.

A child (folder or file) of a linked folder can be renamed by right-clicking on it and accessing the Rename action from the contextual menu. The file or folder will be renamed both in the <oXygen/> Project view and on the local disk.

If a project folder contains many documents a certain document can be quickly located in the project tree if the user selects with the mouse the folder containing the desired document (or some arbitrary document in this folder) and types the first characters of the document name. The desired document will be automatically selected as soon as the typed characters uniquely identify its name in the folder. The selected document can be opened by pressing the ENTER key, by double-clicking on it and with one of the Open actions from the popup menu. For opening a file of known type with other editor than the default use the Open as action. Also the selected document can be deleted by pressing the DELETE key or by choosing Remove from the context menu.

  The files from the entire project or from a project folder can be validated against a schema of type Schematron, XML Schema, Relax NG, NRL, or a combination of the later with Schematron with a single button click on Batch Validate. This together with the logical folder support of the project allows you to group your files and validate them very easily.

If the resources from a linked folder in the project have been changed outside the view you can refresh the content of the folder by using the Refresh action from the contextual menu. The action is also performed when selecting the linked resource and pressing F5 key

A list of useful file properties similar to the ones available in the Properties view can be obtained with the Properties action of the popup menu invoked on a file node of the Project view tree, in a dialog like below:

 

Figure 4.39. The Properties dialog

The Properties dialog

The full path to the project files is hidden by default. Click the toolbar button Show/Hide Path to toggle the file path on or off.

The files and folders that appear as visible in the Project view can be filtered. Click the toolbar button Filters to set filter patterns for the files you want or do NOT want to show.

 

Figure 4.40. Project filters dialog

Project filters dialog

In the dialog you can introduce filter patterns for the files that will be shown, files that will be hidden and filter patterns for the linked directories of the Project view that will be hidden.

Right-clicking any object in the tree-view displays the Project menu with functions that can be performed on, or from the selected object. Options available from the Project menu are specific to the object type selected in the tree-view.