Edit

The menu Edit contains the following subcommands:

Styles

The feature Styles is useful when you need to apply fixed text styles to whole tables, table rows, table cells or text elements put in a table cells. In that case you can choose from logical styles offered by XSLfast or create them by yourself.

Select the element on which you want to apply a style.

If you want to apply a style to a table, select it and use the function Table->Logical style in the inspector window:

If you want to apply a logical style to a text element located in a table cell, select it and use the function Text->Logical style in the inspector window:

If you want to apply a logical style to a table cell, select an element in a table, on whose cell you want to apply the style, use the function Logical Table properties-> Cell properties-> Logical style in the inspector window:

If you want to apply a logical style to a table row, select a row in the table, on which you want to apply the style then use the function Table-> Table properties -> Row properties -> Logical style in the inspector window:

XSLfast allows you to create new styles, edit existing styles and remove styles. Start working with styles with the menu Edit -> Styles, this will open the Logical styles editor:

With these settings you can define styles for texts, tables, table rows and table cells.

XSLfast offers you predefined styles that you can modify according to your needs. Your modifications can be saved with a new name but you can overwrite existing styles as well.

All the existent styles are listed in the Styles area, scroll to find the style you want to edit or to remove.

To remove the style, choose it in the Styles list and then press the "Remove" button.

To create a Text element style, click the button "New text" and open the Text logical style editor, where you can specify your own parameters for the style. The window opens on the Settings tab:

In the Style properties section you can change the Style name and select the Parent style for the current style you are editing. Parent style means that you can choose it as a base for your style, its properties will be passed to the "child" style. This option may be useful when you want to create similar styles with only a few differences in some parameters.

In the XSL-FO options section you can define three parameters, which will be applied as a part of a style:

Normalize spaces inside XML means that superfluous blanks in the XML source are suppressed.

If the XML-Node contains a special character that should be interpreted as plain text should not use the Disable output escaping. If this character should be interpreted as code that should be parsed, the Disable output escaping function should be enabled.

Example: In your XML source a node contains pointed brackets (< or >) in the text. XLSfast will try to interpret the pointed brackets as plain text. In some cases you would like the pointed brackets to be interpreted as the start of a tag, though. Enable the Disable output escaping function to achieve this.

Attention: If you use the Disable output escaping function, make sure that the Tags are complete and follow the rule of well-formed XML.

The function Collapse spaces can also be used to superfluous blanks, but this time in any content of the text flow element. Please note that the only difference between Collapse spaces and Normalize spaces inside XML is that the latter refers exclusively to the XML source and Collapse spaces considers all content of the text flow element (static and dynamic XML content).

Change the font type, font size, font style, text color and background color using the Formatting menu. The result will be displayed in the Preview window below:

The Text logical style editor contains one more tab - Advanced. There you specify some standard Frame properties, identical to those listed in the inspector window for a frame:

To create a Table style, press the "New Table" button and the editor will open:

In the Style properties section change the Style name and select the Parent style for the style you are currently editing.

In the Formatting section select a background image or background color for the table by pressing the button "Select background image" or "Select background color". Also you can remove a selected image by pressing the "Remove background image" button. The selected image or color is displayed in the area on the left:

The content of the Advanced tab of the editor is identical with that of the logical style editor for texts.

To create a new Table row style press the "New Table row" button and open the Table row logical style editor:

In the Style properties section change the Style name and select the Parent style for the style you are currently editing.

In the Formatting section you specify Keep with next and Keep with previous options. It is possible to keep with next and/or previous with line, column or page:

In the Formatting section select background image or background color for the table row by pressing the button "Select background image" or "Select background color". Also you can remove a selected image by pressing the "Remove background image" button. The selected image or color is displayed in the area above:

To create a new Table cell style, press the "New table cell" button and open the Table cell logical style editor:

In the Style properties section change the Style name and select the Parent style for the style you are currently editing.

In the Formatting section select a background image or a background color for the table by pressing the button "Select background image" or "Select background color". Also you can remove a selected image by pressing the "Remove background image" button. The selected image or color is displayed in the area on the left:

It is even possible to define the color of the cell by choosing it from the XML file you are working with. Write the XPath for the color in the Color XPath field above the Preview window:

Note: If there is a defined color using the Set background color button, the color specified in Color XPath will be overruled and not be visible.

To edit logical styles choose the style you want to edit from the styles list on the left, and then press the "Edit" button. Logical style editing windows for different elements are the same as for creation.

Find and Replace

The functions Find and Find and Replace can find and substitute character strings in the layout. You enter the string you need to find into the field Find in the pop up dialog:

To limit your search, there are some search restrictions available.

Search options:

No selection: The Find/Replace feature simply searches for the text you entered in the Find window.

Example: if you enter the word "pag" and press the OK button, words like "page", "pagination", "unpaged", etc. can be found.

Case sensitive: If you mark this option, the search will be performed for the words written exactly in the case as the required word in the Find window.

Example: if you enter the word "page" and press the OK button, words like "page", "unpaged", but not "Page" can be found, only the words written in lower case, matching the search.

Whole words only: If you mark this option, the search will be completed for the words written exactly as the required word in the Find window. This means that XSLfast searches exclusively for the word (or string) that you have entered, not for all words containing that word as well.

Example: If you enter the word "Page" and press the OK button, words like "Page" or "page", but not "pages" or "unpaged".

Treat as regular expressions: If you mark this option, you can specify only some letters and complete the search.

Example 1: You enter the expression "pa.*e" and have a text element with the sentence "The name of the separator in page numbering is chosen by the user." in the layout, then the search will find these constructions:

"The name of the separator in page numbering is chosen by the user."

Searching for the construction with an ".*" expression means that all constructions starting with the letters written before the ".*" and ending with the letters after ".*" will be found. The search engine always uses the last found letters after the ".*" in the each sentence.

There can be no letters before and/or after the ".*" expression in the search request. If there are no letters before ".*", then the search will mark the matching construction from the first sign of the sentence. If there are no letters after the ".*", then there will be marked matching construction with an end in the last sign of the sentence.

Example 2: If you enter the expression "pa.?e", words as "page", "pane", "pale" can be found.

".?" expression works as substitute for the letter which is not entered. ".?" expression can be used everywhere in the required word.

We can only give you a small impression of regular expressions here:

In general you can specify a query like (^[AB]).*{3,7}[AB][0-9]+;

This indicates you need to find:

- any word, which is not beginning with A or B
- with a length from 3 to 7 characters before A or B;
- and the word ends with A or B and digits following A or B.

The simple expressions are:
.* - anything
. - any symbol
[A-Za-z] - one English symbol
[0-9] - digit
[0-9]* - digits

Note: You can use several search options at the same time.

You can also choose the elements in which the search will be performed. They can be: text, xPath expressions, XSL code and templates. It is possible to search in one, several or all elements of this list.

The hits are again displayed in the window and a small additional dialog offers you the options you have now at your disposal:

Replace replaces the currently selected hit. Replace all replaces all found strings. Skip omits the currently selected hit and jumps to the next one and Cancel closes the dialog.

For more information on regular expressions, please refer to the technical literature or the Internet.

If your layout is a combination of regions (like title or tail page, or defined regions for odd and even pages, see chapter Pages), all pages are searched.

Attention: Multilayouts combining entire layouts (see chapter Multilayout) cannot be searched with the Find function. Unlike that, layouts created by combining single layout pages or regions from different layout files can be searched by the Find function.

When the search produces hits, they are displayed in a tree:

Double clicking the hit opens the element where it is contained:

The text can be edited as usual.