Creating New Document Templates

Creating a New Document Template

To create your own custom document template and have it appear in the new file wizard, follow these steps:

1. Create a new file (whatever type of document you need) and customize it to become a starting point for creating new files of this type.

   Tip

   You can use editor variables in the template file content and they will be expanded when the files are opened.
2. Save the new file template in one of the following locations:
   • The templates directory of the Oxygen XML Developer plugin installation directory ([OXYGEN_INSTALL_DIR]/templates). File templates saved in this directory will appear in the Global templates category in the New from templates wizard.
   • You can also use any other directory of your choice, but you must add that directory to the list of templates in the Document Templates preferences page. This user-defined directory will appear in the New from templates wizard with the new file templates that you save in it.

   Attention

   The name that you use to save the template will be the name that appears in the new file wizard, including capitalization, space, and characters (for example, My Custom Template1.xml will appear in the new file wizard as My Custom Template1).
3. Open the new file wizard (New toolbar button or File ⇒ New ⇒ New from Templates) and you should see your custom template in the appropriate folder. For DITA templates, they will also appear in the dialog box for creating new DITA topics, but if you create a corresponding properties file (see the procedure below), you need to set the type property to dita.