Introduction
The Editor uses the Content Completion Assistant (CCA) to help you insert provisions and other elements into your document. It ensures that what you insert is valid in terms of document structure and the underlying XML.
The CCA offers a list of provisions and other elements that are valid at your cursor’s location and will insert your selected provision in the next correct place in the document.
How to insert a provision using the Content Completion Assistant (CCA)
To insert a provision:
Press Enter to activate the CCA.
Select the provision you wish to insert. You can use the up and down arrow keys or your mouse or you can start typing the name of the provision you want.
Press Enter again.
The selected provision/element will be inserted in the next correct place, e.g. if your cursor is within a paragraph of a Regulation and you select “Regulation” from the CCA then a new Regulation will be inserted after the current Regulation.
Your cursor will move into the provision that is inserted.
(You can also bring up the CCA by using the Insert element… option in the right-click context menu or in the toolbar, Insert menu>Insert element….)
How to insert next default provision
You can quickly insert the next default provision for the context your cursor is in by pressing Ctrl+Enter.
The provision that will be inserted in the provision that would appear at the top of the CCA had you pressed Enter. This will generally be the same provision as the one your cursor is in with the exception of when your cursor is a heading, opening words or closing words.
How to insert an additional text paragraph within a provision
You can insert an additional paragraph of text within a provision by using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Enter.
Note on the ordering and contents of the CCA
The CCA will show all the valid sibling elements and valid child elements that you can insert.
A sibling element is an element that will be inserted after the current element your cursor is in. For example, if your cursor is in a subsection then a sibling would be another subsection. Or if your cursor was in the opening words of a paragraph then a sibling would be a sub-paragraph.
A child element is an element that will be inserted within the current element your cursor is in. For example, if your cursor is in a subsection then a child would be a paragraph, definition or step.
The CCA shows options in the following order:
First, the valid siblings of the immediate provision your cursor is in.
Then the valid children of the provision your cursor is in.
Last, the valid siblings of each ancestor above the provision your cursor is in.
So, for example, if your cursor is in a subsection within a Bill, the CCA might look like:
In this case:
The valid sibling of the provision your cursor is in is Subsection (1).
The valid children are: Paragraph (a), Definition, Step, Heading, Unnumbered Paragraph.
The valid siblings of ancestors of the provision are: Section, Cross heading, Part.
Hints and tips
See Numbering for more on how provisions are numbered when they are inserted.
Schedule paragraphs will convert to schedule sub-paragraphs when you insert another schedule subparagraph after the schedule paragraph’s content
(Bills only) Sections will default to having a subsection in them when first inserted. You can use ‘promote’ (ALT + [) to promote it into section/content.
New provisions are inserted after the element that your cursor is in. To insert a provision before the first provision in the series, it is sometimes useful to ‘view block tags’ (from Document > Preferences… in the toolbar menu) and place the cursor before the starting tag of the first provision in the series. From here you can use the CCA to insert the provision at the beginning of the series
(SI/SSIs only) When inserting a second schedule, the system will automatically insert the ‘SCHEDULES’ heading before the first Schedules.
(SI/SSIs only) Regulation (or Articles etc.) text will convert to Sub-paragraph text if you insert a Sub-paragraph (1) after it or even before you have added any content. And vice versa, when you delete the penultimate sub-paragraph, the remaining sub-paragraph will automatically convert into plain Regulation (or Article etc.) text.
The combined numbering format used by SI/SSIs will happen automatically when you insert your child provision into the parent e.g. inserting a sub-paragraph (i) into the first paragraph (a) – will become: (a) (i) sub-paragraph text here.
(UK Bills only) to insert a ‘note’ at the top of the bill e.g. for Money bill rubrics, place your cursor in the ‘preface’ element. To do this either
Place cursor at the beginning of the Stage version rubric in blue writing at the top of the bill and use left arrow to move cursor through XML tags until it is in ‘Preface’ element (see the breadcrumbs to check)
Go to “Document > Preferences” in the upper toolbar menu and select “Block tags” in the dialogue box that appears. This will present XML tags in the Editor View so that you can place your cursor directly after the “Preface” element
When you have your cursor in the Preface element, click ‘Enter’ and select ‘Note’ (don’t forget to return to ‘No tag’ view from ‘Document > Preferences’ when you have finished).
It is possible to insert bullet lists into your documents (bills & SIs). If you right-click on the bullet point and select "Update List Style" you can change the bullet point to an em-dash list or no bullet point.
Screencasts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWBAOaGSXUE