Fig. 1 Forms Editor
After a document is created or opened for editing, a screen appears with the title and two arrow symbols on the left side. (Fig.1) The dark arrow is an 'edit element' link, and the open arrow is an 'insert element' link. Clicking the insert symbol brings up an 'add element' box, in which you can choose what you wish to insert. After selecting and clicking the insert button (alt-i), a focus box appears in which text can be entered and saved.
Documents are structured by text elements. Since text is stored in
XML – which also has a tree like structure – this pattern is carried though to the smallest nodes of a Silva site.
Documents can contain the following elements:
On the right side of the Form Editing screen are delete and move symbols. Clicking the 'X' deletes the element (there will be 'Really delete'? alert). With the 'move down' and 'move up' arrows elements will be shifted one step.
Paragraph
A paragraph is a block of text. You can simply type in the text, or when the text is already available you can cut and paste (multiple) blocks of text from other programs. Silva interprets an empty line as a signal to make a new paragraph. This means you can add multiple paragraphs in one step.
Heading
There are five types of headings; each one in the list is rendered successively smaller than the previous. A heading can always be changed to a paragraph (and back).
List
The standard list types (bullet, numbered, etc.) can be created by changing the 'Type' setting.
Definition list
The text you are reading right now is part of a definition list. A definition term appears on a line by itself, followed by the term's definition.
Preformatted
Text in this element will be presented exactly as entered. Tags (such as HTML, XML, TAL, etc.) are not rendered and white space is preserved. In the rendered HTML a <pre> tag is used to format the text. This is useful to show code examples or command line statements.
Image
Placing a new image happens in two steps. In the first step the image must be uploaded in a container (local or elsewhere), where it appears in the 'Assets' area of the listing. After the upload return to the document you were editing. Step two involves placing a reference to the local image in the document. Select the image in the focus box, and click save_and_exit (or alt-e).
Table
After choosing 'table' as element and clicking the insert button, a Table focus box appears. Columns can be added and deleted and there alignment set with the controls at the top, but this is easier if there are already rows inserted. Click the 'insert' symbol, and Silva will present a pull-down menu with options for two kinds of table rows.
With the controls at the bottom of the Table focus box the style of the table can be set. The types are described in the select menu.
It's also possible to nest elements in table cells. Clicking the 'Nest element' symbol brings you to a nested element editor. This works the same way as the normal editor, but has less elements available (e.g. it is not possible to insert a TOC). After adding elements you can return to the document by clicking the 'Edit parent' symbol at the top.
Note: before clicking the 'nest element' symbol you should Save if you entered text in the focus box.
Complex list
Similar to a normal list, text can be entered in list items, but also other elements can nested, e.g. another list. Click the 'Insert item' symbol to add a list item. If the list item is just text, enter it in the focus box. Clicking the 'Nest item' symbol brings you to a Nested element editor, which works the same way as the nested element editor of tables (see above).
Table of Contents (TOC)
A TOC displays the titles of all documents in the current and underlying folders as links. Titles on lower levels are indented. Since the TOC is dynamic, new documents appear automatically. The depth of the TOC can be configured in the controls row at the bottom of the focus box.
External Source
Site managers or developers can create external source element in the Zope Management Interface. These can be used to add new types of structure or functionality to the document editor. All an Author needs to do is select an available external source and fill in any parameters required to configure the external source.
External sources can be SQL sources, which an be used to retrieve tabular data from relational databases using SQL, or code sources, which can be written in the full toolset that Zope makes available to developers. Other types of sources could also be created.
Several inline styles such as bold, italic, underlined, superscript and subscript are available. Text must be 'marked up' with special characters.
If you really need to enter combinations like two plusses or two stars used for styling, the \ character can be used to indicate this:
\**
will show up literally as:
**
Links to other documents can be added. The simplest way is to use the get link reference button. This will allow you to select the item you want to link to in a popup window and automatically inserts the right markup in the editor.
Links can also be entered manually, which is especially useful if you want special behavior or want to link to an external site.
Link markup has the following structure:
((link text|http://www.x.yz))
This creates a link with the appropriate text and hyperlink.
It is also possible to create links to a target in the other page:
((link text|http://www.x.yz|target name))
Leaving the target section is left empty, like this:
((link text|http://www.x.yz|))
is a way to indicate that you want a new window to be opened when the user clicks a link.
Silva recognizes URLs in entered text. If you wish that a link's text and the URL are identical, there is no need to use markup. Silva will automatically create the link. Supported protocols are http, https, ftp, and news. But if the text is different from the URL, this is how to markup a link.
((link text|http://www.x.yz))
Link to external source with target:
((link text|http://www.x.yz|target)), ((link text|http://www.x.yz|))
Link to internal source:
((link text|path/page)), ((link text|path/manual.pdf))
Link to internal source with target:
((link text|path/image.jpg|target)), ((link text|path/image.jpg|))
If it is likely that your publication may be moved, it is necessary to make relative links to documents inside your publication rather than absolute links. This means just having the links relative to the folder they are in as in the above examples, rather than giving the entire url relative to your site.
Link to anchor in the same document:
((text|#linkname))
Link to anchor in an other document:
((text|path/document#linkname))
Link to anchor in an external source:
((link text|http://www.x.yz/path/to/anchor#linkname))
Mailto link (not recommended because of spambots):
((firstname.lastname@domain.com|mailto:firstname.lastname@domain.com))
Index items will be picked up by the Indexer and the information can also be used by Docma to create indexes in Word. An index will also be turned into an anchor in the HTML that is generated for a Document. Index items won't actually show up in the public document otherwise. You can see them in the editor however, as they will be highlighted in yellow.
The only text an index item needs is the text under which it should appear under the generated index as well as the name of the HTML anchor.
Index items are created like this:
[[index item|item as shown in index]]
An anchor is the same as an index item.
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