Editing the XML Content

By default you can type only in elements which accept text content. So if the element is declared as empty or element only in the associated schema you are not allowed to insert text in it. This is also available if you try to insert CDATA inside an element. Instead a warning message is shown:

Editing in empty element warning

You can disable this behavior by checking the Allow Text in empty or element only content check box in the Author preferences page.

Entire sections or chunks of data can be moved or copied by using the drag and drop support. The following situations can be encountered:

Styled content can be inserted in the Author editor by copying or dragging it from: The styles and general layout of the copied content like: sections with headings, tables, list items, bold and italic text, hyperlinks, etc. are preserved by the paste operation by transforming them to the equivalent XML markup of the target document type. This is available by default in the following predefined document types: DITA, DocBook 4, DocBook 5, TEI 4, TEI 5, XHTML.

More details about setting up a custom copy/paste handler are available in the Author Developer Guide.

The font size of the current WYSIWYG-like editor can be increased and decreased on the fly with the same actions as in the Text editor:

Removing the Text Content of the Current Element

You can remove the text content of the current element and keep only the markup with the action Remove Text available on the submenu Refactoring of the contextual menu and on the toolbar XML Refactoring. This is useful when the markup of an element must be preserved, for example a table structure but the text content must be replaced.

Duplicating Elements with Existing IDs

If the Auto generate IDs for elements option is turned off and you duplicate elements with existing IDs, the duplicates lose these IDs. If the previously mentioned option is active, when you duplicate content, Oxygen makes sure that if there is an ID attribute set in the XML markup, the newly created duplicate has a new, unique ID attribute value. If you cut and paste content, the moved element retains its ID.