Manually Applying and Managing Tags

In the long run, automating the tagging process is going to save time and money, but understanding the basics of applying tags to text in InCopy is a good place to start.

Applying Tags to Text

Applying a tag to text is simply a process of highlighting a piece of text and clicking on a tag in the Tags palette. The text is now assigned that XML tag. For instance, create tags named headline, byline, and body, then select your headline text and click on the headline tag. Select the byline text and click on the byline tag, and then select the body copy and click on the body tag. You can methodically go through an entire InCopy document and tag pieces of text appropriately. Notice that as you insert your cursor into a piece of tagged text, the name of the applied tag is highlighted in the Tags palette. You can also tag content by dragging a tag onto a frame in Layout view. Dragging a tag onto a frame applies the tag to the entire frame, as well as to any other frames that are part of the same text thread.

If you have enabled Show Tag Markers (View > Show Tag Markers), note that there will also be tag markers visible around the text you tagged. In Galley or Story view, the tag markers are small graphics. In Layout view, they look more like brackets (Figure 7.4). When you apply the tag or drag a tag onto a frame, InCopy also generates a new element in the XML structure of your document, which can be seen in the Structure pane (see the "Viewing Structure" section later in this chapter). Enabling Show Tagged Frames (View > Show Tag Markers) displays tagged frames with the tag's assigned color in Layout view.

Figure 7.4. Tagged text looks different in Layout view (top) and Galley or Story views (bottom).

Untagging and Retagging Content

The Tags palette offers two radio buttons at the top of the palette, Add Tag and Retag, which control InCopy's behavior when you're applying tags to text. Much of what the buttons do is context sensitive, but feel free to modify the settings when you need to. If the Add Tag button is selected when you click on a tag, it assigns the selected tag to the selected text. If the Retag button is active, InCopy removes the existing tag and assigns the new tag you're clicking on. To remove a tag from an item entirely, simply highlight that item in the document and click the Untag button in the Tags palette.

Tip

InCopy's default keyboard shortcut set does not include any keyboard shortcuts for using XML other than opening the Structure pane. If you'll be working with XML regularly in InCopy, you might create your own custom keyboard shortcuts for that purpose. For more on customizing keyboard shortcuts in InCopy, see Chapter 1.