Rich Text - User Guide

The top tool on the Doc toolbar opens a header/footer editing space.

When the header/footer editing space is showing it adds a new toolbar as wide as the page, just above the typing space. The Show menu lets you swap between different headers and footers.

Because the Different page 1 header/footer checkbox is selected, there are four different objects that can be edited as shown in the open menu above. Each object is optional. If the checkbox is not selected, the editing choices are Header or Footer.

The Insert menu lets you insert page number or page count values. Note that these values aren't used while editing in Tag, however they get converted to page number and total number of page fields in generated *.docx documents.

The header/footer editing space is closed by clicking the X (right of the Show dropdown list), or by clicking the header/footer tool once again to toggle it off.

The bottom tool on the Doc toolbar opens a Default format settings dialog with multiple tabs. The This document tab lets you set the default font, font size and paragraph alignment for the current document.

The All documents tab provides access to global preferences that work on all template documents.

The Bottom margin is picked up whenever you create a new paragraph using the Enter key. The Font size multiplier is used to change the appearance of fonts within Tag without changing the specified font size that ends up in generated content.

The Remove empty paragraphs in output checkbox is helpful because sometimes when you use conditional logic, you end up with an empty paragraph. If this checkbox is true (recommended), empty paragraphs are removed during generation.

The Block style updates tab creates custom named styles. More precisely, it creates named bundles of format properties that you can apply to blocks (paragraphs) with a simple menu selection.

You can modify font-related, alignment and margin format properties, and save them as a group using any name you want. You can then apply them to blocks while typing using a tool on the Block toolbar as discussed below.

The Edit toolbar contains familiar editing tools including cut/copy/paste. It also has placeholders for undo and redo commands.

The find/replace menu has two options.

The Find/replace in displayed content... menu item opens a Find and replace dialog. It works much like other find/replace dialogs with one important difference. If you select the Use templates checkbox, the replace-with part of the command will insert a call-template instruction instead of typed characters.

An example of how this works is provided in the DOCX Import step-by-step guide. It shows how to replace all occurrences of "She" with calls to the He-She template, which will insert "He" or "She" according to the current gender value when generating content.

The Search all templates within document... menu item opens a Search dialog with a wider scope than find/replace. It searches through all templates in a document rather than just the displayed content. It can also search multiple files in a folder, or search for expression fragments instead of text.

The Inline toolbar contains familiar inline text tools including font, font size, bold, italic and text color.

It also has a more menu (three vertical dots) which has a Force a space menu item. This is sometimes needed when you have two adjacent logic instructions, and want to ensure a space is inserted between them in generated content.

The more menu also has an Inline properties... menu item which provides a way to modify inherited properties for inline spans of text. For example, if you bold a few words and select some of the bold characters, you are selecting an inline span of text. This inline span can also be used to change inherited format properties for all characters in that span. This is shown below.

The Inherited value (Normal) is shown read-only for reference. You can change the Current value and it will only affect the selected inline span of characters. You can also change font, font size, italic and text color properties which are all inherited.

While inherited properties may not be commonly used on inline spans of text, the same mechanism works on blocks and tables as discussed below.

The Block toolbar contains familiar editing tools for block (paragraph level) content including ordered/unordered lists, margins and text alignment. It also has a block style update tool (pen tip) that lets you apply block style updates to selected text as discussed earlier.

The more menu has several items including Block properties..., which works just like Inline properties... above except these inherited properties are applied to selected blocks instead of inline spans. The same list of inherited properties are supported (font, font size, bold, italic and text color).

The Clear inline formatting menu item does what you would expect, and removes all formatting instructions from the selected blocks.

The next two menu items require a bit of explanation. Blocks are used to group lines of text, just like paragraphs in a word processor. Sometime you want this, and sometimes you want to work with text that is buried within a block (e.g., create a dynamic phrase, or insert a name). If your report contains a mix of block and inline level templates, then you may get unexpected results in the generated *.docx file (e.g., vertical spacing that is too large or too small).

These menu items let you fix this issue. If the selected text already has blocks, the Change blocks to plain text menu item will be available, otherwise the Change plain text to block menu item will be.

Finally, the Add space before and Remove space after menu items are shortcuts for changing the space before/after of selected blocks. When space is added, the default Bottom margin setting discussed above is used as a space value.

The Image toolbar allows you to insert images using the image (top) tool.

If you select an image that is already in text, you can open the Image properties dialog using the properties tool (bottom, three horizontal dots).

The Image properties dialog lets you change height, width or both of the selected image. If the Preserve aspect ratio checkbox is selected, the original width-height proportion will be maintained as image size changes.

The Table toolbar handles all table editing commands. It allows you to insert tables using the table (top) tool. When inserting a table, you specify the number of columns/rows, table width, table style, columns widths and inherited properties.

The more menu (three vertical dots) is enabled if you select any text within a table. It contains several options for modifying a table.

The Table/Row/Cell properties... menu items all work the same. They open a properties dialog that focuses on only one part of the table's structure (table, row or cell level). Inherited properties can be assigned at all three levels, allowing you to easily create some nice table formatting effects.

The Insert and Delete menus will add or remove columns and rows based on the current selection. For example, if three columns are selected and you select Insert / Column to right, three new columns will be inserted instead of one. The Delete / Table menu item will delete the entire table.

The Select table and Copy table menu items are convenience items to save you some mouse actions.

The Table toolbar handles all table editing commands. It allows you to insert tables using the table (top) tool. When inserting a table, you specify the number of columns/rows, table width, table style, columns widths and inherited properties.

The more menu (three vertical dots) is enabled if you select any text within a table. It contains several options for modifying a table.

The Table/Row/Cell properties... menu items all work the same. They open a properties dialog that focuses on only one part of the table's structure (table, row or cell level). Inherited properties can be assigned at all three levels, allowing you to easily create some nice table formatting effects.

The Insert and Delete menus will add or remove columns and rows based on the current selection. For example, if three columns are selected and you select Insert / Column to right, three new columns will be inserted instead of one. The Delete / Table menu item will delete the entire table.

The Select table and Copy table menu items are convenience items to save you some mouse actions.

The Logic toolbar is where things stop working like a normal word processor. It is only present when editing dynamic rich text documents (*.xsl), not static rich text documents (*.fo).

The editor currently supports four kinds of logic instruction:

• call-template (insert content from a named template)
• value-of (insert the value of an expression, which may include or combine data field values)
• if (only insert fragment if an expression resolves to true)
• choose/when/otherwise (insert the first when fragment with an expression that resolves to true; if none do, insert the optional otherwise fragment)

All of these instructions look the same when inserted within text - they are called logic bubbles. They behave just like small images and flow within text as you type.

When a document is generated, each logic bubble is replaced by the content it represents. Instructions can be nested and combined in many ways.

When a logic bubble is clicked, action buttons display to provide more options.

More information about the expressions that control logic instructions is provided in the expression editor guide.

When several logic instructions are used together, it can be tricky to keep track of all the possible outcomes (processing paths). The templates guide describes the decision tree, which provides a visual representation of logical flow of generated rich text.

When calling named templates, it is possible to pass-in additional data (parameters) to the template using expressions. This is also explained in the templates guide.

Each tool on the Logic toolbar remembers the last 10 ways that you used it, and includes them as convenience menu items as follows.

The Samples app includes several examples that use templates like his-her and he-she. The same technique is easily adapted for other, different data setup files.