Oxygen XML Forum

We have many writers using Oxygen version 22. Authoring of DITA and Docbook files, source files stored in git.

Is there a way to turn off automatic background pretty-printing of XML files that are being authored in Author mode? Sometimes the XML gets reformatted by the pretty-print operation and this makes it hard to see what was actually changed in the file, for example with a git diff.

Many Oxygen users must run into this. How do people handle this?

Thanks,
Mark

Hi Mark,

By default, with the default settings we provide, only the modified XML elements get re-serialized when saving the XML content. For example if I open an XML document and make a change inside a <p> element, only that element gets pretty printed on save. This is the best we can do.

In the Oxygen Preferences->"Editor / Edit Modes / Author" page there is a "Serialization options" section which has additional settings. Maybe you can find a behavior you like in the "Compatibility with other tools" combo box.

An alternative would be to have a CSS which declares all elements as space preserve:
{code}*{white-space:pre;}{code}
but this would mean that Oxygen would let you insert new lines everywhere, it would not work out well in the end.

Regards,
Radu

About using Git diff, Oxygen's Git client add-on has visual files comparison and you can also integrate Oxygen's visual files comparison with an external Git tool:

https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/ ... git-2.html

Regards,
Radu