About the Topic Editor

The topic editor contains all the structure and formatting tools you need to write a topic.

You use the document pane to add text, images, and tables. You open documents in this pane from a document map that contains the topic. You can add a single topic to any number of maps. You can also manage the revisions of topics, for more information, see Working with Revisions.

See Also
Document Editor
Editing Maps
Working with Revisions

The DITA structure requires that you follow a specific series of elements. The topic editor guides you through the authoring process.

You can select text and apply any of these formatting elements from the topic editor toolbar:

  • Bold
  • Italics
  • Underline

You can remove any formatting by selecting the text and clicking that style in the toolbar. The toolbar items act as toggles: if that style is not applied, it applies it. If that style is applied, it removes it. You can apply more than one formatting style at a time, and the formats can overlap.

Text editing works much the same as other word authoring tools. In addition to the toolbars and menus, you can use these keyboard shortcuts:

Action Instructions
Save Press Ctrl + S
Undo Press Ctrl + Z
Redo Press Ctrl + Y
Insert a new topic Press Ctrl + Enter
Copy text Select the required text and press Ctrl + C.
Cut text Select the required text and press Ctrl + X.
Paste text After copying or cutting, insert the cursor where you want to place the test and press Ctrl + V.
Paste as text After copying or cutting, insert the cursor where you want to place the test and press Ctrl + Shift + V.
Insert a footnote Press Ctrl + Alt + F
Insert an external link Press Ctrl + K
Find and replace Press Ctrl + F
Select a word Double-click a word.
Select a paragraph Triple-click within the paragraph.
Delete a paragraph Select the paragraph and press Delete. The app leaves an empty paragraph symbol.

Press Delete twice to delete a selected paragraph and the paragraph symbol.
Insert a paragraph Place the cursor at the beginning of a paragraph and press Enter. The app inserts an empty paragraph above that paragraph.

You can cut and copy text and entire elements between topics, and you can paste plain text copied into the computer clipboard from another text editor. For example, you can paste text copied from Microsoft Word into a topic. When pasting text copied from another app, these rules apply:

  • Any bold, italics, underline, superscript, or subscript annotations remain defined for the text pasted into the topic.
  • Pasting multiple paragraphs creates the same paragraphs in the topic.
  • Any other formatting is discarded.