The new XML syntax writes <text> tags only where necessary. If the text style is identical with the paragraph style, the text is simply placed between the <para>…</para> tags, making it much easier to read for an external translator. Explicit <text> tags are only inserted for text with a different format from its paragraph. In addition to this, redundant “styleclass” attributes for <text> tags and links are eliminated – text that has the same style as its paragraph no longer needs a styleclass attribute at all.

Tidy XML only works if you use styles!

You can only get the full benefits of Tidy XML if you use styles instead of manual formatting. When you format with styles, each paragraph just contains a reference to the styleclass. When you apply manual formatting all the formatting information must be written literally into the XML tags. Your XML gets bloated again and much harder to translate.

You can clean up manual formatting in existing projects by "normalizing" your styles with the Toolbox utility included with the Premium Pack add-on (see below for details).

Not compatible with earlier versions of Help+Manual

Tidy XML is not activated by default because it is not compatible with older versions of Help+Manual. You won't lose data when opening  a Tidy XML project with an older version, but the formatting and layout will probably look distorted. Don't open projects converted to Tidy XML with older versions of Help+Manual, and make a full backup before converting so that you will have access to the older version if necessary!

You can activate Tidy XML and apply it to all the topics in existing projects with the options in Configuration > Common Properties > Miscellaneous Options (in the Project Explorer on the left in Help+Manual).

Procedure:

1.Make a backup of your  project and store it in a safe place!

2.Open your original project in Help+Manual and in the Project Explorer navigate to Configuration > Common Properties > Miscellaneous Options.

3.Enable “Write translation-friendly XML“, then click on “Apply to all topics“ to apply it to all existing topics. (Otherwise it will only be used for new topics created after activating the setting.)

Starting in version 3.25, the powerful Toolbox utility included in the Premium Pack skins add-on has a new function with which you can globally clean up manual formatting from your projects. This can very significantly reduce the amount of "cruft" in your XML code caused by manual formatting.

The Entire Project option in this tool strips all the manual formatting from an entire project, but it enables you to retain text formatted with different styles within paragraphs (which are efficient) and optionally also manually-applied bold, italics and underlining (which are so common that they can hardly be avoided). In addition to this it can also standardize the styles used for hyperlinks and toggles, allowing you to choose specific styles for all hyperlink and toggle types.

The Individual Styles option is used for integrating inline formatting imported from HTML, converting it globally into references to styles.