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Getting Familiar with the Interface

Oxygen XML Editor includes several perspectives and editing modes to help you accomplish a wide range of tasks. Each perspective and editing mode also includes a large variety of helper views, menu actions, toolbars, and contextual menu functions.

There are various ways that you can configure the layout of the views or editors, and you can customize the toolbars.

Regardless of the perspective or editing mode that you are working with, the default layout consists of the following areas:
Menus
Menu-driven access to all the features and functions available in Oxygen XML Editor. Most of the menus are common for all types of documents, but Oxygen XML Editor also includes some context-sensitive and framework-specific menus and actions that are only available for a specific context or type of document.
Toolbars
Easy access to common and frequently used functions. Each icon is a button that acts as a shortcut to a related function. Some of the toolbars are common for all perspectives, editing modes, and types of documents, while others are specific to the particular perspective or mode. Some toolbars are also framework-specific, depending on the type of document that is being edited. All the toolbars can be configured to suit your specific needs.
Helper Views
Oxygen XML Editor includes a large variety of dockable views to assist you with editing, viewing, searching, validating, transforming, and organizing your documents. Many of the views also contain useful contextual menu actions, toolbar buttons, or menus. The most commonly used views for each perspective and editing mode are displayed by default and you can choose to display others to suit your specific needs. The layout of the views can also be configured according to your preferences.
Editor Pane
The main editing area in the center of the application. Each editing mode provides a main editor pane where you spend most of your time reading, editing, applying markup, and validating your documents. The editor pane in each editing mode also includes various contextual menu actions and other features to help streamline your editing tasks. Each file that has been opened has a tab at the top of the editing pane and there are several ways to switch between tabs or move them.
Perspectives
Oxygen XML Editor includes several different perspectives that you can use to work with your documents. The Editor perspective is the most commonly used perspective used for displaying and editing the content of your XML documents, and it is the default perspective when you start Oxygen XML Editor for the first time. Oxygen XML Editor also includes a Database perspective that allows you to manage databases and their connections and a few debugging perspectives that allow you to detect problems in XSLT or XQuery transformations.
Status Bar
The status bar at the bottom of the application contains some useful information when you are working with documents. It includes the following information, in the order it is displayed from left to right:
  • The path of the current document.
  • The Unicode value for the character directly to the right of the current cursor position.
  • The status of the current document. The status of Modified is displayed for documents that have not yet been saved. Otherwise, this section is left blank.
  • In Text editing mode, the current line and character position is displayed.
  • If the Check for notifications option is selected, this section will show you when new messages have been received. The types of messages include the addition of new videos on the Oxygen XML Editor website, the announcement of upcoming webinars and conferences where the Oxygen XML Editor team will participate, and more.
  • The memory consumption, including the memory used by the application and the maximum amount that is allocated to the application.
  • If the Show memory status option is selected, a Free unused memory icon is displayed in the bottom-right corner and you can use this icon to free up unused memory.