XML Formatting Preferences

To configure the XML Formatting options, open the Preferences dialog box and go to Editor > Format > XML.

The following options are available:

Preserve empty lines - The Format and Indent operation preserves all empty lines found in the document.
Preserve text as it is - The Format and Indent operation preserves text content as it is, without removing or adding any white space.
Preserve line breaks in attributes - Line breaks found in attribute values are preserved.
Note: When this option is enabled, the Break long attributes option is automatically disabled.
Break long attributes - The Format and Indent operation breaks long attribute values.
Indent inline elements - The inline elements are indented on separate lines if they are preceded by white spaces and they follow another element start or end tag. Example:
Original XML:
```
<root>
  text <parent> <child></child> </parent>
</root>
```
Indent inline elements enabled:
```
<root> text <parent>
    <child/>
  </parent>
</root>
```
Indent inline elements disabled:
```
<root> text <parent> <child/> </parent> </root>
```
Expand empty elements - The Format and Indent operation outputs empty elements with a separate closing tag (for example, <a atr1="v1"></a>). When not enabled, the same operation represents an empty element in a more compact form (<a atr1="v1"/>).
Sort attributes - The Format and Indent operation sorts the attributes of an element alphabetically.
Add space before slash in empty elements - Inserts a space character before the trailing / and > of empty elements.
Break line before attribute's name - The Format and Indent operation breaks the line before the attribute name.
Element spacing - Controls how the application handles whitespaces found in XML content:
- Preserve space - List of elements for which the Format and Indent operation preserves the whitespaces (such as blanks, tabs, and newlines). The elements can be specified by name or by XPath expressions:
  - elementName
  - //elementName
  - /elementName1/elementName2/elementName3
  - //xs:localName
  The namespace prefixes (such as xs) are treated as part of the element name without taking its binding to a namespace into account.
- Default space - The list contains the names of the elements for which the content is normalized (multiple contiguous whitespaces are replaced by a single space), before applying the Format and Indent operation.
- Mixed content - The elements from this list are treated as mixed content when applying the Format and Indent operation. The lines are split only when whitespaces are encountered.
Schema aware format and indent - The Format and Indent operation takes into account the schema information regarding the space preserve, mixed, or element only properties of an element
Indent (when typing) in preserve space elements - Normally, the Preserve space elements (identified by the xml:space attribute set to preserve or by their presence in the Preserve space elements list) are ignored by the Format and Indent operation. When this option is enabled and you edit one of these elements, its content is formatted
Indent on paste - sections with number of lines less than 300 - When you paste a chunk of text that has less than 300 lines, the inserted content is indented. To keep the original indent style of the document you copy content from, disable this option.