CE General Parameters

All CE have general parameteres, which are explained below.


Example for general parameter of a CE


Parameter

Function

Remarks

ID

 A unique identifier, given by the system for exactly one single instance of a CE in a structural template.  

 Name

 The internal name of a CE in the structural template is used for the identification of the CE. This is the label being displayed for the CE to the editor.  
Language dependent This value decides whether the CE is language dependant. For some cases (e.g. images) a structural template may contain elements that are not language dependent but are the same for all languages. Non language-dependent elements are only managed in the leading language (see Leading Language).  
 Mandatory Mandatory fields need to be filled in by the editor. If no value has been entered, a document using the template with such a mandatory field cannot be saved.  
 Offer to Editor Defines if the CE is displayed to the editor in the editor interfaces.  It might make sense to hide those CE that cannot or should not be edited by the editor anyway.
 Editor Mode Using the standard setting “Read/Write”, the editor can edit the CE’ content. In case the editor should only be allowed to see the CE, his rights can be limited to "read only". In this case, the CE is displayed, but the content cannot be edited. An example for using "Read Only" is when a complex editor mask has to be created with different titles and remarks. In this case, the Administrator would create some CE only for this purpose and would pre-populate the CE values.

 Style

 Most CE may be styled individually with a proper CSS style. If styles have been defined for a specifc CE (see CSS Conventions for the Master Stylesheet), their names will appear in a selectbox. This option in general is not available for system templates (see System Templates (Multi Customer)).

In general you should decide whether you prefer to set styles on the CE configuration level or on the level of the HTML template code (see  HTML-Templates for Documents). In case of a textarea in  WYSIWYG mode, you should always set a default font style for the CE, otherwise content won't be displayed the same way in editor mode and on the Website.
 Default Values

Most CE offer the possibility to enter a default value. This means that in a CE is already assigned some content.

In case the system is configured to use multiple languages, the default values are offered in all languages. Each individual field is identified via the ISO-code of the language. This also applies when the field has been configured to be language independent.

Basically, the default values are only being used for existing documents that are based on the corresponding template if the respective field is empty and the document is opened and saved. That means, the default content will not be automatically tused in every document.

This means that in case default values exist, the deletion of a  value of a CE (without replacement with new content) is not persistent . The next time the document is edited, the default value will re-appear. In order to avoid this, the editor might enter a blank space. The system considers this to be content and the default value is not loaded into the field. On the other hand, the blank space is also interpreted by the <cmexist> tag as existing content (see <cmexists>).