[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] State of browsers/JUMBO (was Re: Cement Shoes for XML?)
At 22:39 01/09/98 -0400, Simon St.Laurent wrote: >Some of you may be interested in my latest essay, "Cement Shoes for XML?", >which explores some reasons why client-side XML support, at least in the >dominant browsers, may be slow in coming or perhaps worse. Hopefully, I >haven't said anything too rude, but it's the result of several weeks of >frustration brought on by reading articles about how slow and/or broken the >XML >development efforts in the current browsers appear to be. > >Developers planning on using server-side tools to send XML to browser clients >will probably find it most alarming. (Myself included.) Minor correction: the essay suggests that JUMBO is a specialist browser for chemistry - in fact it is a general element-oriented browser which can address any domain where functionality can be provided by adding code on a per-element basis. For example I have added a simple vector graphics module which can be expended to support VML/PGML/FOO when those firm up (and when I feel confident enough to start using JDK1.2/Java2D for the additional primitives). I was surprised not to see more browsers at Montreal developers' day - my current assessment is that the main authors are: - Steve Withall (XXX) - Scott Parnell (Raven) - PeterMR (JUMBO) All of these use Swing (Java) for their rendering and all suffer from the bugginess of Swing. [This bugginess was confirmed by several conversations.]. For example we have found it difficult to provide proper formatting using the Style/AttributeSet and received wisdom is that the author has to rewrite parts of Swing to get it to work. As a result of the lack of browsers I have spent time investigating how JUMBO2 might be expanded to meet 'most' needs. It seems that the following may be valuable: - support for simple styles. I am developing an approach where readers can select per-element behavior for stylesheets [i.e. bold, leading CR, display start-tag, colour could be selected from a menu of elements.] It would probably be relatively simple to make it into a subset of CSS. I don't intend to do this myself because I don't have the time or passion to worry about rendering on screen at least till Swing is better. - simple searching (similar to XPointer). - HTML-like forms/CDC/XML-data. I demo'ed this briefly at Montreal - the forms are created by the XML input and can be written out with edited values. This seems to me a simple, valuable thing that a browser can do to enhance the value of XML over HTML. Thus JUMBO can apply algorithms very easily to client-side data entry to validate before upload. I don't imagine I'm the only person who thinks this could be a useful function. - vector graphics. JUMBO will have the ability to read or edit simple vector graphics. Not completely finished, but I've done this before. This would allow simple - if not instantaneous - collaborative graphical working. Doesn't this excite other people?? - structural and per-element editing. The only thing I am not going to do is write a text editor. Editing other elements is easier, both individually and for structure. I have repeatedly suggested that we develop these tools communally and have offered JUMBO on this basis. I've had a few replies, but not as many as I would have hoped. Is everyone paralysed by waiting for others to do it??? It seems inconceivable that we couldn't write a useful simple browser starting from where we are. I have written a manifesto about this on http://www.xml.com (xml:geek) if you want further motivation. P. The next snapshot of JUMBO should be out this in day or two. It's not polished - and some of the things and only part implemented - but most of the bits are there somewhere. Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic net connection VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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