Creating and editing text documents

You can create and edit text documents (MIME type text/plain) directly on the BSCW ser­ver with­out restrictions. The text editor used is a simple text box where the contents of the do­cu­ment are displayed and may be entered and edited.

To create a text document

•      select  File    New    Text Document  in the top menu menu of the current folder.

•      Enter name, optional tags and description of the new document. Enter the text of the document into the text box offered.

•      Hit [OK] to create the document.

To edit a text document directly on the BSCW server,

•      select   Change    Edit  in the action menu of the document. When you use the built-in simple text editor, this action automatically locks the document, until you are finished with editing.

•      The contents of the text document are displayed in a text box where you may edit the docu­ment freely.

•      By hitting [OK], the edited document replaces the existing one or creates a new ver­sion if the document is under version control.

During document creation (either via upload or directly on the server), the character set of the document has been inferred from the cre­a­tor’s browser information. You can also ex­plicit­ly set the character set via   Change    Properties . Uncheck the check box ‘Try to select the char­ac­ter set for contents of a text file automatically’ and confirm with [OK]. You can then enter the character set for the docu­ment in the action form.

In addition to plain text documents, direct editing is also possible for other types of text do­cu­ments, e.g. for XML documents (MIME type text/xml). Because of the primitive nature of the editing method, direct editing of text documents is only recommended for rather short do­cu­ments.