Patent attributes
A development environment is described that includes identifying relevant code or rules applicable to various elements of a hierarchical document and displaying the relevant code or rules to a user within a display interface of the development environment. The system recognizes document elements highlighted by a user and searches through a data structure of the code or rules applied to the hierarchical document for code or rules that expressly reference the element selected by the user. The system then searches the data structure of the code or rules applied to the parent elements of the selected element. The discovered code or rules are then displayed to the user in the development environment along with any properties that are associated with the code or rules. The development system determines which of the properties do not apply to the selected element and render a marker indicating the non-applicability of that property.