Getting Started

First Things to Do After Installation

• Start XMetaL Author.
• Turn Off Tip of the Day.  When you first open XMetaL, deselect the "Show tips on startup" box in the lower left corner.
• As a test, create a new file from a template.  Select File --> New.  Select the appropriate tab for your repository.  Select any template and click OK.  The template will open (you do not need to save this when you are done setting up XMetaL).
• Turn off the Structure View.  Select View --> Structure View.
• Expand the Element List on the right-hand side so that all of the tabs are visible.  Click and drag the border between the editing window and the element list as far to the left as necessary to see the title of each tab.
• Click and drag the Views toolbar, moving it up and to the right, so that it is on the same line as the Standard toolbar.

Things to Know As You Get Started

• XMetaL does not by default set it self as the default program for opening XML files.  To open a file in XMetaL, either open it using the File --> Open menu option in XMetaL, or right click on the file and select "Edit with XMetaL" or Open with --> XMetaL 4.6.
•  XMetaL offers four views of your file.  The default view is "Normal", which hids all of the document markup and presents a word processor-like interface.  The "Tags On" view shows visual representations of each element but otherwise styles the document much like the Normal view.  The "Plain Text" view shows the underlying XML file markup.  The Page Preview view shows the HTML output of the default XSLT stylesheet.  You can switch between views using the View menu, buttons on the View toolbar, or buttons on the lower left-hand corner of the editing window.
• New files can be created from templates by selecting File --> New or clicking on the white document icon in the Standard toolbar.  Select the appropriate tab and double click on the appropriate template.  A new file will be created called Untitled1 (or Untitled2, Untitled3, etc.).  The first time you save you will be prompted to save it under a new name.  Whenever you save a new finding aid, or use Save As to change a file name, be sure to include ".xml" at the end of the filename.  XMetaL will not automatically append the correct filetype.
• Files that are being edited in XMetaL should have filenames that end ".edit.xml".  The ".edit" segment is intended to distinguish files prepped for editing in XMetaL from pure EAD files.
• Templates include text-replace boxes.  These are grey boxes are spots for you to input text.  Click in the box, it will turn black, and then start typing.  The box will disappear and be replaced by your input text.
• Every time you save FACT checks several elements to make sure they have the same values.  If you make any changes to <eadid> (EAD Identifier) or <titleproper type="formal"> (Formal Title), on save the values of ead/@id and eadid/@publicid will be updated respectively and you will dialog boxes will appear to alert you of the change.  Click OK to dismiss the alerts.
• XMetaL allows you to have more than one file open at a time.  Use the tabs on the bottom of the editing window to switch between them. 
• XMetaL remembers what files you have open at the time when you close the program.  The next time you open XMetaL, it will reopen whatever files you had open at the time you last closed the program.
• The Element List on the right hand side has 6 tabs.  We use the Inline, Block, Metadata, and Links tabs.  Ignore the Used and All tabs.
• Elements only appear in the element list when they are valid to use at the current point of the finding aid.  This is a great way to figure out what elements you can use if you are confused. 
• Elements listed in the Metadata tab are always inserted at the next valid point of insertion.  If you want an element to be inserted before your current position in the document, you have to move your cursor to an earlier spot in the file.
• There are nine FACT-specific menus in XMetaL:  Metadata, Components, Endmatter, Block, Containers, Inline, Links, Navigation and Views, and Refactoring.  These menus list almost everything you can do in the FACT.  They are not context-sensitive, so they list all options regardless of whether or not they are available at the current point of the document.
• FACT is set up to display certain inline tags in color.  This is to provide a visual indication that the tag is there, otherwise there would be no way to know a string of text had been marked up as a title, for example.  Titles appear as green, languages appear as orange, links appear as blue, and names (corpname, persname, famname) appear as maroon.
• When you are inputting text into FACT, if you need to break your current element and start another, e.g. you want to start a new paragraph or split an existing paragraph in two, simply press the Enter key.  A paragraph or other element will be inserted.
• XMetaL allows you to use the standard Ctrl-Z keystroke to undo your edits.  Note: XMetaL includes view changes as edit events, so if you switch from the Normal view to the Tags On view and back, those changes will be undone if you then press Ctrl-Z twice. 
• One of the few pieces of data that you need to input but for which there is no text-replace placeholder in the template is normal value of dates in the EAD Header and the collection-level Unit Dates (both inclusive and bulk).  When you add dates in either of these places, with the cursor in the date field, hit the keystroke Alt-U.  A dialog box will open where you can input the normal (machine readable) version of the date(s).  For more info, see Normalize dates. 
• The second piece of data that you must supply but will not be prompted for is the level attribute.  If a component is a series or a subseries, you must supply the appropriate level attribute value for that component.  It is optional to specify if a component is a file or an item.  To add the level attrubute to a component, make sure your cursor is in the appropriate component, then select Components > Update level attibute, or use the keystroke Alt-L.  Select the appropriate value from the list and click OK.