Overview of the user interface

The menu bar:

After a DocBook 5 document is opened:

The XML menu is disabled (grayed) when no documents are opened in XMLmind XML Editor (or when there is no specialized menu associated to the type of the document being edited, e.g. DITA ditaval).

The name of this menu changes and the menu is populated with items when you open a document in XMLmind XML Editor or when you switch from a document type to another (e.g. switch from a DITA map to a DITA topic).

The toolbar:

After a DocBook 5 document is opened:

Initially the toolbar contains two groups of buttons: commonly used file commands and generic editing commands not requiring the user to specify an argument.

When a document is opened in XMLmind XML Editor, a third group of buttons is added to the toolbar.

The node path bar:

Shows which XML node is selected and which are its ancestor elements. Allows to explicitly select an XML node.

The node path bar is a key user interface component of XMLmind XML Editor. Without it, you could not author XML using just a tag-less, word processor-like, styled view.

The Search→Find Element button.

Allows to find an element by its name, one of its attribute, the text it contains or by a combination of these criteria.

Navigation buttons:

Document tab:

A document tab contains up to 5 different, synchronized, views of the same document. By default, a document tab only contains a single view styled using the “normal” CSS stylesheet.

Right-click menu:

If you right-click on a misspelled word, this displays a popup menu allowing to correct the spelling error or to ignore an unknown word.

If you right-click elsewhere, this displays a popup menu variant of the Edit menu.

The Edit tool:

Allows to add, replace, convert and wrap XML nodes.

The Attributes tool:

Allows to edit the attributes of the selected element.

The Search tool:

Allows to search and replace text in the document being edited.

The Spell tool:

Allows to check the spelling of words in the document being edited.

The Characters tool:

Allows to insert special characters.

The Validity tool:

Displays error messages when the document being edited is invalid with respect to a DTD or schema.

Clicking on an error number selects the corresponding element in the document view.

The Validity state button:

Shows the validity state of the document being edited: OK, semantic warnings, semantic errors, cross-reference errors, invalid values in some attributes and/or in some elements, invalid structure of the document.

Clicking this button allows to explicitly check the validity of the document being edited. Normally this is not useful as the validity is automatically checked when you open a document and each time you save it.

Status message area:

Clicking on displays a dialog box showing the message log.

toggle used to activate and deactivate the automatic (that is, on-the-fly) spell checker.

Absent in XMLmind XML Editor Personal Edition.

Pressing the INS/OVR button (keyboard shortcut: Esc Ins) allows to switch from Insert Mode to Overwrite Mode.

The Clipboard content tool:

Indicates what has been copied to the system clipboard.

Clicking on displays a dialog box showing the content of system clipboard.