Tools Menu Introduction

The Tools menu provides access to various authoring tools to improve the speed and efficiency of your writing and editing tasks.

• Spelling — Opens the Spelling dialog box. Set the Spelling preferences by choosing Tools > Preferences and then choosing the Spelling category.

• Word Count — Counts the number of words in the current document or in a highlighted selection of text. The word count is displayed in a message dialog box.

The word count feature does not count words in generated text or in ignored marked sections. However, it does count words in elements that are ignored by the spelling checker. See Configuring elements to be ignored during a spelling check for more information.

◦ Macros — Play and edit an existing macro.

◦ Record New Macro — Record the steps you perform and save them as a macro for later use.

◦ Cancel Recording — Cancel the recording of a macro.

◦ Update Current — Updates the query at the current cursor location.

◦ Modify Current — Displays a dialog box allowing you to modify the parameter values of the query at the current cursor location.

◦ Flatten Current — Removes the namespaced tagging surrounding the query results at the current cursor location, making the remaining content (the query results) part of the actual document. Flattened results cannot be updated.

◦ Update All — Updates all queries in the current document. This menu is not available if any of the queries in the document are specified as disallowing manual updating.

◦ Offline — Allows editing of documents containing merged data while the workstation is not connected to the source of query results.

• Change Tracking — Allows you to track changes made to your document. The change tracking submenu offers the following options to control the way changes are tracked in your document:

◦ Track Changes — Toggles change tracking on and off.

◦ Accept or Reject Changes — opens Change Tracking, where you can review proposed changes to the document, sort them by user or date, and accept or reject proposed changes. In the Edit view, each user's proposed changes to the document can be identified by the user's color.

◦ Accept selection — accepts the highlighted proposed change. This option is only available if a tracked change is selected in your document.

◦ Reject selection — rejects the highlighted proposed change. This option is only available if a tracked change is selected in your document.

◦ Find Next Change — Move the cursor to the next tracked change. This option is only available if there are changes tracked in your document.

◦ Find Previous Change — Move the cursor to the previously tracked change. This option is only available if there are changes tracked in your document.

• Compare — Compares different versions of the same file or document to see where changes have been made. The Compare submenu offers several methods for comparing documents:

◦ Last Saved — Compares the current document in the Edit window with the last saved version of the same document.

◦ Window — Compares any two documents that are open in the same Arbortext Editor session. Choose Window to bring up a Compare Document dialog box containing a list of all the documents open in the same session. Choose the open document you wish to compare to the document that was active in the Edit window when you launched Compare.

◦ File — Compares the current document in the Edit window with any other file. Choose File to bring up a Compare File dialog box for selecting the file you wish to compare to the current file.

◦ Version — Compares the current document in the Edit window with a previous version stored on a PTC Server. Opens the Version to Compare dialog box, where you can select a previous version of the current document on a PTC Server to compare to the current document.

This choice is only available when you are connected to a PTC Server using the PTC Server connection. You can only select the choice when you are editing a document opened from a PTC Server.

Compare preferences are applied when Arbortext Editor constructs the compare results. You can set Compare preferences settings by choosing Tools > Preferences and then clicking the Compare category.

• Context Rules — Ensures markup is valid by making sure it's inserted in the proper context in the document. Context Rules are turned on if a check mark appears next to it.

You can turn off Context Rules by clicking on Context Rules. If there is no check mark next to Context Rules, context rules are disabled.

If context checking is disabled, markup can be inserted in any location in the document. This may result in an invalid document if markup is then inserted where it is not permitted. Therefore, this mode is not recommended for general authoring since it often requires more time to fix markup errors later than to insert markup correctly as the document is created.

• IDs and ID References — Validates all IDs in the document, including those in file entities. It displays a dialog box listing all declared or referenced IDs (ID and IDREF attribute values, respectively), with error and reference-count data.

This choice is only available when you are editing a DITA topic or map. If the ditakeycontext set option is set to a value, the key context defined there is used for determining where to look for key definitions. Otherwise, the current document is used for the context.

• Find Key References — Opens the Keys and Key References dialog box displaying only the keys contained in the tag containing the cursor.

This choice is only available when you are editing a DITA document and the cursor is in a tag with a key reference attribute (keyref) defined.

• Update References or Update Selected References — Updates all DITA references for either the entire document or the current selection in the document.

• Check Completeness — Checks that required elements are present in the document as well as any of its file entities.

• Document Type Viewer — Shows the document structure and enables you to insert markup at the next valid location in your document.

• Queued Transactions — Opens the Queued Transactions Dialog Box to list queued publishing transaction requests on the Arbortext PE server.

Available only when Full Menus are displayed and when your environment is set to use Arbortext Publishing Engine for publishing.

• Save Application — Opens the Save Application dialog box which saves the document, stylesheet, and environment information necessary to reproduce a software problem. If you are using Arbortext Publishing Engine for publishing documents, the Arbortext Publishing Engine configuration information is also saved with the rest of the application information. This information helps PTC Technical Support diagnose problems.

• Administrative Tools — Provides access to several administrative tools for both Arbortext Editor and document types. Available only when Full Menus are displayed.

◦ Aliases — Opens the Select Alias Map dialog box. If an alias map has been created for this document type, you can select it.

◦ Compare Config with Publishing Engine — Opens the Compare Publishing Configuration with PE dialog box, allowing you to generate a report comparing publishing configuration on the Arbortext Editor client with publishing configuration on the Arbortext PE server. The returned Publishing Configuration Comparison report notes the differences between the publishing environment on the client and the server. This menu item appears only if you are using Arbortext Publishing Engine for publishing documents. This information can help PTC Technical Support diagnose problems.

◦ Compile Document Type — Opens the Compile Document Type dialog box, allowing you to compile a document type that hasn't been compiled or has changed since the last compile. Only SGML document types need to be compiled.

◦ Java Console — Opens the Java Console. The Java Console displays everything that a Java program writes to the Java System.out PrintStream and output from the JavaScript print function. However, the Java Console is not a standard input (stdin), so you can't type in the Java Console window.

◦ Validate DCF File — Checks the document type’s document type configuration file (.dcf) and reports any errors or warnings to the Document Type Configuration Errors/Warnings dialog box.

◦ Validate DITA Specialization — For a document type that is a DITA specialization, checks the specialization and reports any errors or warnings to the Validate DITA Specialization dialog box.

◦ Publishing Rules — Opens the Publishing Rules Dialog Box, where you can create and manage publishing rules to use when you publish a document.

◦ Execute ALD Snapshot — Opens the Execute PTC ALD Snapshot Dialog Box, where you can run a troubleshooting process on an PTC APP snapshot zip file.

◦ Borrow Licenses — Opens the Borrow Licenses Dialog Box, where you can borrow a license to work offline.

• Preferences — Opens the Preferences dialog box. Select one of the Preferences categories to customize the preferences associated with that category. The current settings for the selected category are displayed in the preference window. When you click the OK button, your Preferences are saved to your arbortext.wcf preferences file.

• Import Profile Group — Opens the Select File dialog box, where you can select a profiling configuration file (.pcf) that contains set profile groups to import into a DITAVAL file.

Once you select the profiling file, the Select Profile Group dialog box opens where you can select the profile groups to import. Once you select the groups and close the dialog box, the selected groups are imported into your DITAVAL file. This choice is only available when you are editing a DITAVAL file.

• Edit in Dialog — Opens the DITAVAL Editor Dialog Box, where you can modify the conditions for a DITAVAL file. This choice is only available when you are editing a DITAVAL file.

• Test with File — Opens the Select File dialog box, where you can select a DITA map or topic to use for testing your DITAVAL file.

The selected file is opened in the DITAVAL Preview Window with the DITAVAL settings from the current document applied. If the selected file is a DITA map, you are asked whether to open the map or the Resolved Document for Styling for the map. How the applied DITAVAL rules are displayed is determined by the setting of the set ditavaldebug advanced preference. This choice is only available when you are editing a DITAVAL file.

• HTML — Provides several additional commands for cleaning up your XHTML or HTML document. This submenu is only available if you have opened an XHTML or HTML document type.

◦ Fix Character Entities for Browsers — Arbortext Editor generally inserts some character entities like smart quotes and different types of dashes when editing. Some browsers display these entities as text (for example, – and “), rather than the character itself. This tool converts all double quotes and dashes to character equivalents (for example, – and ") that will display in browsers.

◦ Compress Multiple Spaces — Some HTML editing tools add extra white space to HTML files by adding indents and extra spaces. These extra spaces are technically significant in XML, so they display (always in the Editor view and sometimes in Published Output). This tool cleans up those extra spaces. The result still displays the same in the browser.

◦ Clean Mixed Content — Characters (including white space) that appear outside of any tags in an HTML document is called unwrapped text. Unwrapped text causes Arbortext Editor to generate unwanted space.

This tool cleans up mixed content so that the resulting file is accurate with respect to HTML and XML so that it displays and formats properly in both Arbortext Editor and your HTML browser. Choose one of the options available from the Clean Mixed Content Options submenu.

◦ Clean Mixed Content Options — Lists the options available for cleaning mixed content.

▪ Just Delete White Space — White space that is significant in XML but that would be ignored by an HTML browser is deleted so that both Arbortext Editor and HTML browsers treat the document in the same fashion.

▪ Also Wrap Data with <p> — White space that is significant in XML but that would be ignored by an HTML browser is deleted so that both Arbortext Editor and HTML browsers treat the document in the same fashion.

Non-white space characters not contained in any element (such as a P or a heading element) are automatically wrapped within <p> and </p> tags.

▪ Wrap Requesting Confirmation — White space that is significant in XML but that would be ignored by an HTML browser is deleted so that both Arbortext Editor and HTML browsers treat the document in the same fashion.

When Arbortext Editor encounters non-white space characters not contained in an element, it prompts you for confirmation before any wrapping operation.