Preventing unintended changes

[ra0543]

It would be really useful for those of us who use Oxygen both to browse and to edit files to have a an easy way to temporarily switch off the possibility of editing a file that is loaded: perhaps using a toolbar button and/or keyboard shortcut to toggle editability on and off (in any mode). This would allow a user to prevent himself unintentionally making changes while looking at or using the data, but then to be able to switch editing on again if the user finds something that needs to be changed. It would be especially useful where a user want to copy data from one file to another by dragging and dropping, since the source file could be opened and protection turned on to prevent its data being changed (e.g. by the data being accidentally dropped in the wrong place), while the destination file remains open for changes.

[Radu]

Hi,

There is a checkbox called Can edit read-only files in the Oxygen Editor Preferences page.
If unchecked and the edited file is made read-only or writable the editor will detect this and switch from being editable to being not editable.
So if the checkbox is checked and for example you keep a "Windows Explorer" opened and switch the "Read-only" flag on the file Oxygen will detect this and make its contents read-only (showing a lock icon) or writable.
Unfortunately for now you cannot change the read-only flag for a file from inside Oxygen.

Regards,
Radu

[ra0543]

That's useful to know.

Obviously I could use the operating system level protection, but I think easily turning editability on and off inside Oxygen (without necessarily making the file itself read-only, since I might not have the permissions to change this) would be a very helpful addition too. It is easy to make unintended edits to files while trying to use the non-editing features of Oxygen (e.g. by accidentally using 'replace' when one meant just to 'find').

In fact, it might even be good to have the option to protect the structure of a document, i.e. allowing the possibility of editing text nodes but not of changing structure (by creating, moving or deleting elements or attributes).

Perhaps you might bear it in mind for a future release?

[Radu]

Hi,

I registered your improvement request to be discussed for a future version.

Regards,
Radu