The Notes pane (shown in Figure A) provides an area where you can document your schemas, preview individual declarations, and provide versioning information. Notes can be entered in this pane for the currently selected declaration or for an entire schema. To change between viewing notes for a selected declaration or viewing notes for an entire document, the appropriate option must be selected in the View menu. If the Notes pane is set to display information about the selected declaration, the Notes pane will update itself when you change the currently selected declaration.
Figure A - The Notes Pane (at the bottom of the window) for a declaration
The tab options along the bottom of the pane change slightly depending on whether the Notes pane is displaying information about the currently selected declaration or about the schema as a whole, depending on if you've chosen "Show Document" or "Show Declaration" from the top left of the Notes pane:
Declaration | Document | ||
Tabs Displayed: | All Notes Schema Notes Usage Notes Change Notes Source Preview |
Tabs Displayed: | All Notes Schema Notes Usage Notes Version History |
NOTE: SOX is marked by slightly different notes tabs. See Creating and Editing SOX Schemas.
Figure B - The Notes Pane for a schema document
All Notes
If this tab is selected, all notes about a selected declaration or entire document can be entered and viewed in the pane.
Schema Notes
The Schema Notes tab provides an area where notes describing the role of this declaration in the schema or the schema as a whole can be entered. Generally, schema notes are for other schema designers.
Usage Notes
The Usage Notes tab provides an area where schema designers can pass information to document authors who will be using the schema. Usage notes should convey information about what goes in particular elements and how they fit together in terms that the people applying the schema will understand.
Change Notes
Change notes describe changes made to the selected declaration. Most developers create change notes that include what the change was, who made the change, and when the change was made.
Figure C - Turning on Change Logging for a declaration.
Version History
This tab, available only when viewing the Notes pane in "Show Document" mode, is where notes are entered/viewed regarding versions of a schema. Version numbers, the person who created this version, when it was created, and what changed in the version are typically noted here. If the "Prompt When Saving" checkbox, shown below in Figure D, is selected, XML Authority will request this information every time the schema is saved.
Figure D - Turning on Version Control for a schema.
Source Preview
The Source preview tab (Figure E) allows the user to view the source of the currently selected declaration. This is not to be confused with the separate source pane, available through the View menu, which displays the source for the entire document.
Figure E - Example of Source Preview for a selected declaration (paragraph)
You can select different formats for the preview by clicking on the "Preview as DTD" text in the top right of the pane. A menu will appear, letting you choose the format for preview. (The default will be the format the schema was most recently saved in or opened from.)
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