Editor views for topics

Last update: March 26, 2025

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The Editor interface in Adobe Experience Manager supports viewing topics in three different modes or views:

Author

This is a typical What You See is What You Get (WYSISYG) view of the Editor. You can edit topic as you would do in any regular rich-text editor. In the Author view, you have the options to save a revision of the document, find and replace content, insert element, insert hyperlink, insert content reference, and more.

NOTE
When you use the content reference, the referred content is also displayed in Author view in blue color. The referred content is non-editable.

Source

The Source view displays the underlying XML that makes up the topic. If you are comfortable working with XML directly, then you should use the Source view. In addition to making regular text edits in this view, you can also add elements and attributes using the Smart Catalog, or find and replace text, elements, or attributes.

  • To invoke the Smart Catalog, place the cursor at the end of any element tag where you want to insert the new element and enter “<”. The editor shows a list of all valid XML elements that you can insert at that location. Use the arrow keys to select the element that you want to insert and press Enter. When you enter the closing bracket "> the closing tag for the element is automatically added.

  • You can also change an element easily from the Source view. For example, if you change the opening tag of a p element to note, then the closing p tag is automatically changed to /note. In case you replace an element with an incorrect element, then you are immediately shown the Validation Error.

  • If you want to add an attribute to an element, place the cursor inside the element tag and press the Space bar. A list of valid attributes for that element is sown in the Smart Catalog. Use the arrow keys to select the desired element and hit Enter to insert the element. To specify a value for the attribute, enter the equals sign (=) and the editor automatically enters the opening and closing quotes “” wherein you can specify the attribute’s value.

  • In the Source view, there is an Auto Indent option that reorganizes the XML code in presentable and easily readable format. Also, if you select any text and switch from Author to Source or from Source to Author view, the selected text is also highlighted in the other view.

  • Another powerful feature in the Source view is the XML validation in your document. If you open a document containing invalid XML, it is opened in the Source view with the information about invalid XML. For example, in the following screenshot the exact information about the erroneous XML is given in the Parse Error pop-up.

    In the above screenshot, a cross highlight is used to point the line containing erroneous XML.

  • The Find and Replace feature allows you to search for any text, element, or attribute in the Source View.
    For more details, view the Find and Replace feature description in the Tab bar section.

  • The Source View provides many shortcuts to help you quickly navigate and work on a document. The following table lists the supported actions and their shortcut keys:

    To do this
    Use this shortcut
    Add multiple cursors
    Ctrl+Left click
    Multiple non-consecutive text selections
    Ctrl+Left click to drag and select text
    Select text across and in between lines
    Alt+Left click to drag and select text
    Undo multiple selection or exit full screen mode
    Esc
    Show auto-complete
    Ctrl+Space
    Go to the opening or closing tag of the current tag
    Ctrl+J
    Expand or collapse the current tag and its content
    Ctrl+Q
    Select the current element and its content
    Ctrl+L
    Outdent the current element
    Shift+Tab
    Delete the current element and its content
    Shift+Ctrl+K
    Move cursor one word to the left
    Alt+Left Arrow
    Move cursor one word to the right
    Alt+Right Arrow
    Scroll one line up without changing the cursor location
    Ctrl+Up Arrow
    Scroll one line down without changing the cursor location
    Ctrl+Down Arrow
    Toggle full screen
    F11
    Insert a new line after the current element
    Ctrl+Enter
    Insert a new line before the current element
    Shift+Ctrl+Enter
    Find and select the next occurrence of the current word
    Ctrl+D
    Move the current element and its content one element up
    Shift+Ctrl+Up Arrow
    Move the current element and its content one element down
    Shift+Ctrl+Down Arrow
    Wrap the current element in comment tag
    Ctrl+/
    Duplicate the current element and its content
    Shift+Ctrl+D
    Delete text following the cursor. If cursor is before an opening element, then the entire element is deleted.
    Ctrl+K+K
    Delete text to the left of the cursor in the current line. If the cursor is after the closing tag of an element, then the entire element is deleted.
    Ctrl+K+Backspace
    Convert the current text to uppercase
    Ctrl+K+U
    Convert the current text to lowercase
    Ctrl+K+L
    Scroll the current element to the center of the editor
    Ctrl+K+C
    Add a cursor above the current position
    Ctrl+Alt+Up Arrow
    Add a cursor below the current position
    Ctrl+Alt+Down Arrow
    Recursively find the current word (in forward direction)
    Ctrl+F3
    Recursively find the current word (in backward direction)
    Shift+Ctrl+F3

Preview

Opening a topic in the Preview mode shows how a topic will be displayed when it is viewed by a user in their browser. In case of a DITA map, a preview of the map is shown wherein a single composite document of all topics within the map is shown.

The Preview mode gives you the following functionalities:

View content based on conditional filters

If you have used conditions in your topic or map, those conditions are shown in the Filters panel. By default, all conditions are selected and the entire content is displayed. If you deselect a condition, then the content having that condition is removed from the view. You can also choose to highlight conditionalized content.

The following image shows a topic that uses two conditions — Audience and Product. The conditionalized content is highlighted with yellow background.

View the track changes markups

If a document contains track changes markups (or visual cues), then you can also preview the document with or without those markups. While previewing a document, the right panel contains the Filters and Tracking options.

There are three Tracking options that you can choose from:

  • No Markup: In this view, all insertions and deletions are accepted, and a simple view of the document is presented. In this view, you do not view any track changes markups.

  • Original: In this view, all insertions are rejected and all deletions are restored back, and then a preview is shown. Simply, you get the original form of the document before you enabled the track changes mode.

  • Show Markup: In this view, you get all markups for inserted and deleted content.

    The following image shows the preview of a map file with markups: