CLaRK System

Main Editor Components

This is a description of the most important components of the editor within the CLaRK System. The picture above is one example configuration of the system with one opened (work) document. The red labels point to the corresponding components, which are described below:

- Tree Panel

This panel shows the tree structure of the current document. When a new document is opened, the tree structure is folded to its root node. Then the user can expand it by clicking on the branches of the tree. The nodes in the tree are painted in three different styles depending on the type of the corresponding document nodes: for Element nodes - folder looking icons; white page icons for the Text nodes and blue rhomb for Comment Nodes. The names of the Element nodes are drawn in two colors, depending on their validity, i.e. when a node contains an error which makes it non-valid - it is colored in red. Otherwise it is blue. When pointing to a red node, its corresponding error message appears in the Error Message Panel window. The list of all validation errors can be seen here.

Basic tree restructuring operations can be applied here by making right-clicks on the tree. Right-clicks over the selected node(s) make a menu window to appear on the screen. A description of all menu items can be seen here.

The user can move or copy selected nodes without Tree Popup Menu. To move selected node(s) - press right mouse button, drag over the tree structure and drop it in the chosen position - selected nodes are inserted as first child. To copy selected node(s) - press and hold the <Shift> key, press right mouse button, drag over the tree structure and drop it in the chosen position - selected nodes are copied as first child.

When a node is selected in the tree panel, its corresponding tag (or text node) in the Text area is selected too. A multiple selection of nodes in the tree can be made by pressing and holding the <Ctrl> key and pointing with the mouse to the nodes for selection.

- Text Area

This area shows the current document in XML format. By default, the tags are drawn in blue and the text is black. These colors can be changed by using menu Options/Visuals. In this area some of the tags and/or their content can be hidden or shown, new lines and line offsets can be inserted. For details see Document Layout.

If the selection in the area is within a single text node, a list of tags appears and the user is asked to choose one of them to be put around the selected text.

When a tag is selected in the area, its corresponding node in the tree is selected too.

The system has the ability to show more than one Text Area for a document. Each area has its own layout which can be modified independently from the others. In this way, each area forms one view for the document. The different views are synchronized in the following way: when a node is selected in one of them, the corresponding node in the others is also selected.

- Attribute Table

This table contains the attributes of the currently selected element node in the editor. The first column contains the attribute names. In the second one, the corresponding values are written. The second column is editable, i.e. the user can modify the values of the attributes. By using right mouse click, the user can add and remove attributes for the current element node.

- Error Message Panel

This is a list, containing all the errors for the current document (if any). A full list of all error messages can be seen here.

By performing a double click on a certain error message, the node containing the corresponding error is selected in the Tree Panel and in the Text Area.

The popup menu is shown when the user performs a right-click on the Error Messages Panel at the bottom of the main window. The menu command Options opens the dialog Error Filter Options, which allows the user to filter the group of the error messages shown in the error messages panel and to change the color of each group messages. There are six error message groups for element, attribute and constraint errors:

1. Misplaced Element Errors;
2. Undefined Element Errors;
3. Other Element Errors;
4. ID & IDRef Attribute Errors;
5. Other Attribute Errors;
6. All Children Constraint Messages.

The groups can be filtered by unchecking the desired group. After that all messages related to this group will not be shown in the Error Messages Panel. The color of each message group can be changed by clicking the relevant Select button and choosing the desired color from the Choose a color dialog.

- Status Bar

This component shows system messages. When an operation is performed, the color of the text is red. Otherwise it is black. While editing the document, this bar shows the path from the root node to the current one using an abbreviated XPath expression.

- Keyboard Indicator

This button-indicator is used to show which keyboard-set is active in the system. There are two states of it: normal (in green) and auxiliary (in red). For more details about using keyboard-sets see Keyboard. By clicking on the indicator, it changes its state alternatively (normal/auxiliary).

- Main Menu

A detailed description of the main menu can be found in this documentation.

- Toolbar

This toolbar is used for placing shortcuts to most frequently used functions from the Main Menu. Here is the list of all shortcuts and their target items in the menu:

Icon | Target Menu Item
| File / New
| File / Open
| File / Save
| File / Import
| File / Export
| Document / Validate
| Document / New View
| Document / Apply All Children
| Options / Show Attributes In Area
| Edit / Search
| Edit / Next
| Edit / Previous

- Scroll Buttons

These four buttons are used for scrolling the text area. The first two are used for scrolling line by line. The next two are for scrolling page by page.

The reason for creating these four buttons is that the Text Area does not contain the whole opened document, but only a fragment of it. The reason for this fragmentation is that showing a large document takes a huge amount of operating memory. Therefore, the system tries to visualize as less as possible from it. So, when the user navigates through the document, the Text Area dynamically changes its content. This text content generation cannot be controlled by a default scroller. That is the reason for using these special scroll buttons.

- Text Processing Buttons

The first three buttons are used for shortcuts to Copy (Ctrl+C), Cut (Ctrl+X) and Paste (Ctrl+V) operations applied ONLY for text data. If the selection contains not only text, but also tags, the operation is not executed.

The last button: is a shortcut to menu Tools / Text Replace.

- Navi Toolbar

It functions similarly to an Internet browser-like history modul (Back/Forward). Each document activation is recorded in the history and if the Back button is used, the system activates the document which was previously active. Similar behaviour can be expected from the Forward button. This functionality can be applied when the work requires the use of more than one document loaded in the editor.