[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Recommended Simple XML Tools
Scott writes: "The requirements are the most important part of any solution. Still, I'm looking for real-world objective opinions of developers as to what tools they like to use in whatever part of a solution. Or perhaps which ones to avoid (that might be too sensitive for public consumption)." No diss'in. Can't do that. :-) Can say why I like what I like and what I'd like to see sooner than later. Give them a range of applications based on the roles. A web developer is many things or it takes a team to make one. Interoperable tools are important to the team. So, typically, if one is above the level of the simple HTML page, a suite of applications does the best job unless like many of us here, we aren't happy unless we are entering and balancing tags by hand. Again I like a room with a view and for an integrated editing of a document with both composed (rendered) and non-rendered (say treeview), the XMetal product is excellent and I recommend it to people who don't want to get too deep into the markup but need first class professional results with a high correspondence to full spec compliance. The SoftQuad folks have been at this for a very long time. OTOH, day to day, I am also one of those who uses Professional File Editor. When editing direct markup, one wants an editor that gives line counts, matches braces, and has a macro functionality for customization. If it can invoke external functions, say the parser, that is even better. Combined with Internet Explorer and some of the utilities (say, Derek Denny-Brown's validator add in), that covers a lot of ground. But I've done markup for a long time and it comes easy. Now, move on to something like X3D/VRML where structural knowledge isn't as valuable as conceptual construction: eg, making objects into more complex objects and rendering down a tree of transforms, there are those who can edit this "in the UTF-8", but it is not productive. For this, I definitely prefer an editor with the ability to pick objects in the rendered view that is then reflected in a select in the treeview. Then I can get what I see and also edit properties in a convenient representation. That is what is most important in my opinion: the editing representation should be efficient for the task and where multiple representations are needed, they should communicate. For schema development, I liked the XML Spy eval copy a lot. It coped well with the conversions for XDR and that is much appreciated. I tend to use it with PFE. MicroStar's Near And Far is excellent for the same reasons and in the SGML era, was the best DTD designer on the market. I haven't kept up lately as I am just now only revisiting markup design after a couple of years or relational-only with XML as a hobby. When building web pages with scripts, the debugging is the hard part. The script debuggers I've seen aren't as effective as I'd like. I kluge. Because I am proficient with Microsoft Access, I often design and debug the form in the MS editor. That way, the table, script, and query environment is all there at my fingertips. Then I take these and convert over to the HTML environment manually, that being HTML forms are very easy to do by hand. The events match up pretty easily, and I copy the code over as VBScript. There is a Save As HTML but I don't like the style and do usually rewrite the code a bit. The advantage overall is that the code works well before I do that. The disadvantage is that given a disconnected stateless system, I've had to rethink the design. XSL editing remains painful but I am too new to it to be too critical. Apparently, spec fidelity is an issue but that could be the newness. I am looking at the ADO+ papers and MS seems to have thought this all through. Therefore, I am expecting a whizbang editing environment for web applications from Visual Studio. There is a cost, and I doubt I will get rid of PFE anytime soon, but I will be more productive when better integrated debugging and drag and drop are combined with PFE-like direct text. Looks like that is just around the corner for a price. "Speed is money. How fast can you afford to go." quote from Ron Harlow off a sign in a motorcycle shop. Len Bullard Intergraph Public Safety clbullar@i... http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/lensongs.ram Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
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