Entry Helpers
Entry helpers are an intelligent editing feature that helps you to create valid XML documents quickly. When you are editing a document, the entry helpers display structural editing options according to the current location of the cursor. The entry helpers get the required information from the underlying DTD, XML Schema, and/or StyleVision Power Stylesheet, etc. If, for example, you are editing an XML data document, then the elements, attributes, and entities that can be inserted at the current cursor position are displayed in the relevant entry helpers windows.
The entry helpers that are available depend upon:
1.The kind of document being edited. For example, XML documents will have different entry helpers than XQuery documents: elements, attributes, and entities entry helpers in the former case, but XQuery keywords, variables, and functions entry helpers in the latter case. The available entry helpers for each document type are described in this documentation in the description of that document type.
2.The current view. Since the editing mechanisms in the different views are different, the entry helpers are designed so as to be compatible with the editing mechanism of the current view. For example: In Text View, an element can only be inserted at the cursor location point, so the entry helper is designed to insert an element when the element is double-clicked. But in Grid View, an element can be inserted before the selected node, appended after it, or added as a child node, so the Elements entry helper in Grid View has three tabs for Insert, Append, and Add as Child, with each tab containing the elements available for that particular operation.
A general description of entry helpers in each type of view is given in Editing Views. Further document-type-related differences within a view are noted in the description of the individual document types, for example XML entry helpers and XQuery entry helpers.
Note the following:
•You can turn the display of entry helpers on or off with the menu option Window | Entry Helpers.
•In Visual Studio .NET, entry helper windows have a prefix that is the application name.