Text Area Form Control

The oxy_textArea built-in form control is used for entering multiple lines of text in a graphical user interface box. A text area may include optional syntax highlight capabilities to present the form control.

The oxy_textArea form control supports the following properties:

• edit - Lets you edit the value of an attribute, the text content of an element, or Processing Instructions (PI). This property can have the following values:

  • @attribute_name - The name of the attribute whose value is being edited. If the attribute is in a namespace, the value of the property must be a QName and the CSS must have a namespace declaration for the prefix.
  • #text - Specifies that the presented/edited value is the simple text value of an element.
    Note: You can set the value of the visibility property to -oxy-collapse-text to render the text only in the form control that the oxy_editor function specifies.

  • #content - This parameter is useful when an element has mixed or element-only content and you want to edit its content inside a text area form control.

    For example, if you have the following XML content:

    <codeblock outputclass="language-xml">START_TEXT<ph>phase</ph>
               <apiname><text>API</text></apiname></codeblock>

    and your CSS includes the following snippet:

    codeblock:before{
    content:
        oxy_textArea(
          edit, '#content',
          contentType, 'text/xml');
    }

    then the text area form control will edit the following fragment:

    START_TEXT<ph>phase</ph><apiname><text>API</text></apiname>

    Note: When the value of the edit property is #content, the text area form control will also offer content completion proposals
• columns - Controls the width of the form control. The unit size is the width of the w character.
• width - Specifies the width of the content area using relative (em, ex), absolute (in, cm, mm, pt, pc, px), and percentage (followed by the % character) length units. The width property takes precedence over the columns property (if the two are used together).
• fontInherit - This value specifies whether or not the form control inherits its font from its parent element. The values of this property can be true or false (default value). To make the form control inherit its font from its parent element, set the fontInherit property to true.
• visible - Specifies whether or not the form control is visible. The possible values of this property are true (default value) and false.
• rows - This property specifies the number of rows that the form control presents. If the form control has more lines, you can scroll and see them all.
• contentType - Specifies the type of content that the form control will format with syntax highlighting. The following values are supported: text/batch; text/c; text/cc; text/css; text/dtd; text/html; text/java; text/javascript; text/json; text/markdown; text/nvdl; text/perl; text/plain; text/php; text/properties; text/python; text/rnc; text/rng; text/sch; text/shell; text/sql; text/wsdl; text/xml; text/xpath; text/xproc; text/xquery; text/xsd; text/xsl; text/yaml.
• indentOnTab - Specifies the behavior of the Tab key. If the value of this property is set to true (default value), the Tab key inserts characters. If it is set to false, Tab is used for navigation, jumping to the next editable position in the document.
• white-space - CSS property that influences the value that you edit, as well as the form control size:
  • pre - The whitespaces and new lines of the value are preserved and edited. If the rows and columns properties are not specifies, the form control calculates its size on its own so that all the text is visible.
  • pre-wrap - The long lines are wrapped to avoid horizontal scrolling.
    Note: The rows and columns properties must be specified. If these are not specified, the form control considers the value to be pre.
  • normal - The white spaces and new lines are normalized.
• hoverPseudoclassName - Allows you to change the way an element is rendered when you hover over a form control. The value is the name of a CSS pseudo-class. When you hover over the form control, the specified pseudo-class will be set on the element that contains the form control.

  p:before {
    content: oxy_textArea(hoverPseudoclassName, 'showBorder')
  }
  p:showBorder {
    border: 1px solid red;
  }

• spell-check - Set to true to enable automatic spell checking for text inside the component. The automatic spell checking also needs to be enabled in the application. The general configured spell checker language is used if an @xml:lang attribute is not specified explicitly on an ancestor element.

Example: oxy_textArea Form Control

textArea {
    visibility: -oxy-collapse-text;
    white-space: pre;
}

textArea[language="CSS"]:before {
    content: oxy_textArea(
      edit, '#text',
      contentType, 'text/css');
}

textArea[language="XML"]:before {
    content: oxy_textArea(
      edit, '#text',
      contentType, 'text/xml',
      rows, 10,
      columns, 30);
}

Tip: To insert a sample of the oxy_textArea form control in a CSS file , invoke the Content Completion Assistant by pressing Ctrl + Space and select the oxy_textArea code template.

To see more detailed examples and more information about how form controls work in Oxygen XML Author Eclipse plugin, see the sample files in the following directory: [OXYGEN_INSTALL_DIR]/samples/form-controls.

For more information about form controls, watch our video demonstration: