8.1. "Customize Configuration" menu

This menu allows end-users (i.e. non-experts) to customize the configuration associated to the document being edited.

End-user customization of configurations by the means of this menu also works when XMLmind XML Editor is deployed using Java™ Web Start.

The following menu items have an effect on a single configuration: the configuration of the document being edited. For example, if you specify DocBook XSL stylesheet parameter paper.type=USLetter when you are editing a DocBook document, this will have no effect on the DocBook 5 and DocBook 5.1 configurations, even if these configurations share their Convert Document menu with the DocBook configuration.

Using any of the following menu items has an immediate effect on all the opened documents associated to the customized configuration. That is, no need to restart XXE to benefit from the customization.

Save Document As Template

Save the document being edited as a named template. This named template is then displayed in the FileNew dialog box.

This menu item is disabled (grayed) if the document being edited has been modified and thus, needs to be saved. Therefore you need to save the document being edited to disk prior to using this facility.

Arbitrarily complex documents may be used as templates: a document may be modular, may reference graphics files, etc. This is needed for example to create a document template including the logo of a company.

User-defined document templates are added and removed using the "Save Document As Template" dialog box.

Save Selected Element As Template

Save the selected element as a named template. This named template may then be suggested by the Edit tool, depending on the operation to be performed and if this is allowed by the schema.

This menu item is disabled (grayed) unless an element is explicitly selected.

User-defined elements templates are added and removed using the "Save Selected Element As Template" dialog box.

Add Keyboard Shortcut

Add keyboard shortcuts. In other terms, bind up to two keystrokes (example: "F2 u" to a command (example: "moveElement up[implicitElement]").

User-defined keyboard shortcuts are added and removed using the "Add Keyboard Shortcut" dialog box.

Customize CSS Stylesheet

Allows customizing the CSS stylesheet being used by the active styled document view.

Custom CSS rules are added and removed using the "Customize CSS Stylesheet" dialog box.

Use Current View Settings as Default

Save the view settings of the document being edited as the defaults for all the documents of the same type (e.g. all DITA Topic documents). Note that the view settings of the document being edited may be modified using the items of the View menu.

Customize Document Conversion Stylesheets

Using this menu item is a relatively simple way to influence the layout and style of the deliverable (PDF, RTF, HTML, etc) which results from the document conversion.

The document being edited is converted to other formats by the means of XSLT stylesheets. This menu item allows to:

  • select an XSLT stylesheet other the default one,

  • create a custom XSLT stylesheet on the fly,

  • invoke a specialized editor —XMLmind XSL Customizer— to modify a user-created XSLT stylesheet.

However, when the document being edited is converted to an HTML-based format (Web Help, EPUB, HTML Help, etc)[10], the HTML pages which are automatically generated by the aforementioned XSLT stylesheets are styled mainly by CSS stylesheets. When this is the case, this menu item allows additionally to:

  • select a CSS stylesheet other the default one,

  • create a custom CSS stylesheet on the fly,

  • invoke a helper application (generally, a text editor) to modify a user-created CSS stylesheet.

This menu item displays the "Customize Document Conversion Stylesheets" dialog box.



[10] As opposed to XSL-FO based formats (PDF, RTF, .docx, .odt, etc).