[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: xml editors

• To: Robert Koberg <rob@k...>
• Subject: Re: xml editors
• From: Bob Foster <bob@o...>
• Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 18:38:48 -0500
• Cc: Sjoerd Visscher <sjoerd@w...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <407DBF8E.3080706@k...>
• References: <1081934257.5334.12.camel@z...> <407D97D1.2040301@w...> <407DBF8E.3080706@k...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

Robert Koberg wrote:
 > Sjoerd Visscher wrote:
 >
 >>
 >> You are exactly describing what Xopus does. (http://xopus.com)
 >> Although the other suggested editors will work, Xopus is the *only*
 >> editor that lets you use your existing publishing xslts for wysiwyg
 >> editing.
 >
 >
 > How is this possible? What if your transformation is lossy or adds
 > things?-- How do you know what to roundtrip?
 >
 > Can you have multiple content pieces on a page? How do you know where
 > content pieces are as opposed to page structure?

I can't answer for Xopus (and I'd like to hear their answer), but 
restricted cases are possible. The basic idea would be: In XSL every 
input node and result/output node are uniquely numbered. For any input 
text node that is copied directly to output without modification (or 
with trivial idiomatic modifications like whitespace normalization), a 
transitive 1-to-many correspondence could be established. If the user 
modified an output node for which such a correspondence existed, the 
input node and all other output nodes in correspondence with it could be 
changed, as well.

XSL is a Turing-complete language; you can easily write a stylesheet in 
which there is no traceable correspondence between any input and output 
nodes. But I guess this line of argument is good for Xopus, because the 
arguments might keep others from trying to solve even the simple cases.

The real question, I think, is when you do what you can do along these 
lines, do you get a useful result? Don't know. It would depend a lot on 
how people write their stylesheets.

 > I think it is very wrong to have an XML editor edit an instance document
 > based on the result of transforming that instance document.

It's only wrong if it doesn't work. ;-}

Bob Foster
http://xmlbuddy.com/

 > Or perhaps
 > roundtripping rules needs to be setup for each transformation??? Or
 > perhaps the transformations have to be done in a certain way??
 >
 > -Rob
 >
 >> Other editors use the limited possibilities of CSS or require you to
 >> create a proprietary transformation for wysiwyg editing.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: xml editors
    • From: Robert Koberg <rob@k...>

• References:
  • xml editors
    • From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>
  • Re: xml editors
    • From: Sjoerd Visscher <sjoerd@w...>
  • Re: xml editors
    • From: Robert Koberg <rob@k...>

• Prev by Date: RE: RE: Why a "general" solution? (was: RE: XML Binary Characterization WG public list available e)
• Next by Date: Re: xml editors
• Previous by thread: Re: xml editors
• Next by thread: Re: xml editors
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread