Format Preferences

This preferences page contains various formatting options which influence editing and formatting both in the Text and Author modes. To control additional options specifically for the Author mode editor, see Whitespace Handling in Author Mode.

Note: These settings apply to the formatting of source documents. The formatting of output documents is determined by the transformation scenarios that create them.

The following options are available:

Detect indent on open - Oxygen XML Editor detects how a document is indented when it is opened. Oxygen XML Editor uses a heuristic method of detection by computing a weighted average indent value from the initial document content. You can disable this setting if the detected value does not work for your particular case and you want to use a fixed-size indent for all the edited documents.
Tip: If you want to minimize the formatting differences created by the Format and Indent operation in a document edited in the Text edited mode, make sure that both the Detect indent on open and Detect line width on open options are enabled.
- Use zero-indent, if detected - By default, if no indent was detected in the document, the fixed-size indent is used. Enable this option if all your document have no indentation and you want to keep them that way.
Indent with tabs - If selected, indents are created using tab characters. If unchecked, lines are indented using space characters.
Indent size - A fixed number of spaces used for indenting a line.
Hard line wrap (Limit to "Line width - Format and Indent") - If selected, when typing content in the Text editing mode when the maximum line width is reached, a line break is automatically inserted.
Indent on enter - If disabled, when you press the Enter key to insert a line break in the Textediting mode, no indentation will be added to the new line.
Enable smart enter - If selected, when you press the Enter key between a start and an end XML tag in the Text editing mode, the cursor is placed in an indented position on the empty line formed between the start and end tag.
Detect line width on open - When selected, Oxygen XML Editor detects the line width automatically when the document is opened.
Format and indent the document on open - When selected, an XML document is formatted and indented before opening it in Oxygen XML Editor.
Line width - Format and Indent - Defines the number of characters after which the Format and Indent (pretty-print) action performs hard line wrapping. For example, if set to 100, after a Format and Indent action, the longest line will have at most 100 characters. This setting is also used when saving the XML content edited in the Author editing mode.
Note: In order to avoid having an indent that is longer than the line width setting and without having sufficient space available for the text content, the indent limit is actually set at half the value of the Line width - Format and Indent setting. The remaining space is reserved for text.
Clear undo buffer before Format and Indent - The Format and Indent operation can be undone, but if used intensively, a considerable amount of the memory allocated for Oxygen XML Editor will be used for storing the undo states. If this option is selected, Oxygen XML Editor empties the undo buffer before doing a Format and Indent operation. This means you will not be able to undo any changes you made before the format and indent operation. Select this option if you encounter out of memory problems (OutOfMemoryError) when performing the Format and Indent operation.

The indent size and line width limit settings are used in various places in the application:

When the Format and Indent action is used in the Text editing mode.
When you press ENTER in the Text editing mode to break a line.
When editing in the Text mode with Hard line wrap enabled.
When the XML is serialized by saving content in the Author editing mode.

To watch our video demonstration about the formatting options offered by Oxygen XML Editor, go to http://oxygenxml.com/demo/Autodetect_Formating.html.