Displaying whitespace icons in Author mode

[sijomon]

Hi,

Ive virtually completed the first phase of development for my oxygen enhancement project; thanks so much for the assistance I've received thus far.

One thing the users have asked for, which I can't seem to find in the help, is to be able to display whitespace icons (graphic representations of the various whitespace characters, similar to that available via the Options->Preferences->Editor->Text->"Show TAB/NBSP/EOL/EOF marks" but for the Author mode. is such a thing possible as a standard feature in Oxygen 10.3?

Cheers,

Simon.

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

That is not possible in Author version 10.3. Does a content author need to see an icon or a special marker for every EOL or whitespace character? I think the content author is concerned more with the text content and how it is rendered (inline, block, marked as bold or italic, bulleted list items, etc) and less with the location of whitespace characters. For example two adjacent block elements are rendered as two separate boxes (the second box under the first one) separated by some space vertically. Should the horizontal stripe that separates the two blocks be rendered in a special way because it is a whitespace? Other example: a sequence of adjacent whitespace characters is normalized and reduced to a single space character when the paragraph containing that sequence is rendered in Author mode because the content author is interested in a continuous text content, not in preserving exactly the whitespace when editing the XML document in Author mode. I think these details (the exact location of the whitespace, EOL and EOF characters) are interesting only for more technical editors who work in Text mode, not in Author mode.


Regards,
Sorin

[sijomon]

Sorry to hear that this is not possible. Unfortunatly our users, who aren't sufficiently comfortable to edit directly in XML, do need to see exact whitespace locations as the documents they are editing are print ready document markup. Incorrect spacing, tabs, eol etc can cause layout issues latter in the process. Essentially whitespace is treated as content just like any other charachter data, and the users want to be able to see it and edit it just like any other chartacter data.

No matter, if it's not doable, it's not doable.

As allways, many thanks for the swift response.

[sorin_ristache]

Incorrect spacing, tabs, eol etc can cause layout issues latter in the process. Essentially whitespace is treated as content just like any other charachter data

I think the whitespace should be normalized when the XML is processed so the exact number of adjacent whitespace characters should not matter.


Regards,
Sorin

[Radu]

Hi Simon,

Maybe you can email us a sample XML+CSS and a screenshot of how it looks in the Author and how you would like it to look if whitespaces would be rendered.
This would help us get a better idea of what your users desire.
You can find our email here:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/techSupport.html

Regards,
Radu

[sijomon]

I agree with Sorin that whitespaces should be normalised, but apprently they aren't

I have requested that the users prepare an example of how they would like the Author mode whitesapces to display. Unfortunately they are unlikely to be able to supply this before beginning of next week (don't ask me why). I'll get it to you as soon as I receive it.

Thanks again,

Simon.

[Radu]

Hi Simon,

There's no hurry.
Probably the whitespaces are not normalized in those paragraphs because they are defined like whitespace:pre or pre-wrap in the CSS.

Regards,
Radu