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Yes. Although the complexity of the application, the use of high level editing controls that are inserting library objects, and so on influence my decisions on this. Different languages require different tools. XML is great for the overall generic tool, but this falls apart in the crunch. VRML is my best example. I need the IDE editor because: 1. The files are very big typically, and it is hard to keep context in repeating objects. Even then, using a brace-sensitive editor is good for some tasks. Note the content is mostly long strings of comma or space delimited numbers. 2. A character level sensitive app fails and hunting and counting brackets is time consuming. Although sometimes, it is easy to spot a mistake in the raw, it takes practice and much familiarity with the productions. 3. I need the ability to build pieces then assemble these. There are pluses and minuses. Unless one builds to precise measurements, the effect of transforming (moving into place) the local origin then scaling to size runs the performance of the piece into the ground. 4. I need visual manipulation, that is, to grab the object in a rendered window and select an operation (eg, scale) to eyeball the results. I need to visually inspect library components and select them for inclusion. See 3 for problems with that, so optimizers are vital. Note that there are multiple articles from comp.text.sgml on this topic but that was when markup was primarily, almost exclusively, used for text document editing to hand off to a batch renderer. We typically started out with a structural editor, but as we got to know the structures, moved to the venerable ASCII editor for speed. Sometimes, debugging is easier that way given a parser that provides accurate line counts. Also, intellisensible IDE editors often try to *help* and do things like putting in the quotes before one wants them, so when cutting and pasting, it's easy to stuff the right thing into the obscurely wrong place. That said, given a rather large and complex application language (eg, Schema), I use both most productively. len Andrzej Jan Taramina: I believe this is a situation that somewhat parallels the use of IDE's in the programming world. Most experienced and highly productive developers (in my observations) use a decent editor (emacs, JPadPro, SlickEdit, or even vi) coupled with a debugger. Graphical IDE's tend to be slow, bulky and just get in the way for experienced developers (having built many hyper-performance development teams). IDE's hold out the marketing promise of turning a junior/intermediate/less experienced developer into a veteran hotshot. Unfortunately the marketing hype does not deliver in the real world. Caveat Emptor reins supreme. My two cents worth....
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