EditingModesDoc

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EditingModesDoc

Version 3, changed by DebAdair. 04/20/2006. Show version history

Switching between editing modes

JotSpot provides three modes for editing pages: WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), Script Markup, and XML. The WYSIWYG editor enables you to enter and format page content using familiar word-processing techniques. The Script Markup editor enables you to enter and format page content and JotScript and Javascript code using an HTML-like markup language. The XML editor enables you to modify a page's XML source to enter and format page content and Javascript code.

Note: By default, the WYSIWYG editor is set as your default editor. You can change your default editor by modifying your user preferences.

How To Do It:

You can select the editor you want to use when you edit a page:

1. Click the down arrow in the Edit button to display the edit mode list:

2. Select the edit mode you want to use, for example As XML:

Modifying the same page with different editors can sometimes lead to formatting problems. For example, if you edit a page with the WYSIWYG editor and later make changes with the Script Markup editor, extraneous characters might be added to the viewable page. Similarly, if you edit a page in XML mode and later modify it with the Script Markup editor, you might lose your special table formatting. JotSpot displays a warning when editing a page with the selected editor might cause problems:

In general, it's okay to edit a page with the Script Markup editor even if it contains elements that need to be represented as HTML. (You can always revert to an earlier version if you run into editor-related formatting issues.)

Tell Me More:

All of your wiki information is stored in XML format. XML serves as a lingua franca (command language and format) that makes it easy for your data to be stored and communicated with other software - even software not yet imagined. It is one of the key reasons Jot can integrate data originating elsewhere on the Internet. It protects you so that your collaborative efforts can be shared with team members (and sofware applications) around the world. However, while critical to application developers, you don't ever need to use XML yourself for editing or formatting wiki pages.

The script markup mode remains a vital legacy of the wiki movement. In the early days of the Web, it was awkward to compose content in HTML and WYSIWYG editing tools were scarce. Wiki devotees created a set of simple text codes for styling wiki pages (for instance, '*' for 'boldface').

You might find that using script markup mode is faster than using the WYSIWYG editor, especially for first drafts. Script markup is also useful when you want to add HTML code directly to a wiki page.

Whether you use WYSIWYG, script markup, XML, or all three, you can always recover an earlier version of a page if you end up with an undesirable result. Feel free to experiment!

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