Hide Leading/Trailing Tags In The Editor
Overview
Some segments start or end with formatting tags that don't carry any visible meaning for translation — wrapper tags like a paragraph or a plain <span> around the whole segment. When Hide Leading/Trailing Tags is turned on, wxrks visually collapses these tags at the very start and end of a segment so they don't clutter the text you're translating. The tags are still part of the segment — they're just hidden from view, and wxrks places them correctly when you save, so you don't have to manage them yourself.
Audience And Permissions
Any translator or reviewer working in the Editor or Review view can turn this on or off. It's a personal display preference — no special permission is required, and turning it on only changes what you see. It doesn't remove tags from the segment or change what other translators or reviewers see in their own Editor.
Key Concepts
Term | Description |
Leading/trailing tags | Tags sitting at the very start or very end of a segment, with no translatable text before (or after) them |
Hideable tag | A leading or trailing tag that wxrks is allowed to collapse — see "Which Tags Get Hidden" below |
Meaningful tag | A tag that carries visible formatting or a link/image (bold, italic, underline, link, image), always shown even at the edge of a segment |
Full-wrap run | When the leading tags and trailing tags mirror each other in exact reverse order and wrap the entire segment (for example |
Turning It On Or Off
Open a work unit in the Editor (or Review view).
Click the Settings icon in the right-hand sidebar.
Under Your Preferences > Viewing Preferences, toggle Hide Leading/Trailing Tags.
This is a personal display preference, saved to your account, the same way Expanded Tags or Show Whitespaces are.
Which Tags Get Hidden
Not every tag at the edge of a segment is hidden. wxrks only collapses a leading or trailing tag when it's safe to do so without hiding information you'd need while translating:
Meaningful tags are never hidden. If an edge tag represents a link, an image, or visible formatting like bold, italic, or underline, it stays visible even at the very start or end of the segment.
A tag half is only hidden if its matching half also qualifies. For example, a plain
<span>opening tag at the start won't be hidden unless its closing</span>at the end also qualifies to be hidden. This avoids showing a single, orphaned closing tag that would look broken.A full-wrap run is the one exception. If the leading tags exactly mirror the trailing tags in reverse order and together they wrap the entire segment (for example
<p><strong><a>...</a></strong></p>), the whole run is hidden — even if it includes a link or formatting tag — because hiding it doesn't hide a partial formatting cue; the formatting still applies to 100% of the segment either way.Tags in the middle of a segment, or tags that don't sit at the very edge, are never affected by this setting.
What Happens To A Hidden Tag
The tag isn't deleted. It's still part of the segment, just visually collapsed.
You don't need to manually insert a hidden tag. The Insert Tag shortcut and Next Tag shortcut skip tags that this setting is already handling for you.
If you accidentally type text right before a leading hidden tag or right after a trailing hidden tag, wxrks corrects this automatically when you save — the hidden tag is moved back to the true start or end of your translation.
Hidden tags don't count toward the Tag Mismatch warning, so turning this setting on won't create false tag-mismatch alerts for tags you never had to touch.
Troubleshooting
A leading/trailing tag isn't being hidden even though the setting is on: it's likely a meaningful tag (link, image, bold, italic, or underline), or it's one half of a pair whose other half doesn't also qualify. Both are expected — see "Which Tags Get Hidden" above.
A hidden tag seems to have moved after saving: this is expected. Hidden tags are always placed at the true start/end of your target text when you save, regardless of where your cursor was.
I don't see the toggle in Settings: confirm you're looking under Your Preferences > Viewing Preferences in the Editor's Settings panel, not Translation Preferences.
Quick Reference
Action | Where |
Turn hiding of leading/trailing tags on or off | Editor > Settings icon > Viewing Preferences > Hide Leading/Trailing Tags |
Tags that are always shown, even at the edge | Links, images, bold, italic, underline |
Tags hidden even if they carry formatting | Only when they form a full-wrap run around the entire segment |
Manually inserting a hidden tag | Not needed — Insert Tag / Next Tag shortcuts skip it automatically |
Fixing a tag typed on the wrong side of a hidden tag | Not needed — corrected automatically on save |