[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: "Smart ASCII" -> XML for authoring?
I believe the middle ground is big, we see this in the Content management industry, where you mostly need only semi-structured content. Our focus is on making it easier for people to author content with XML tagging. The approach that we have taken is browser based. It is much like working in a word processor, focused on business user authoring. XML Tags define complex content data types. The main difference between XML and HTML tags is that XML is used to structure data, while HTML is used to display data. HTML is a more loosely defined set of tags, where XML requires a more strict and structured arrangement of data. With this special tagging content management systems can use the data to perform operations such as searches and shared content. The XML feature of eWebEditPro2 uses XML in semi-structured content. This assumes that formatting and other items are still allowed within the XML tags. Semi-structured content uses the tags to label certain pieces of data within the content. This then aids in presentation, search and storage needs. XML can tag special data within semi-structured HTML content. As we will see, by the mechanisms used with the editor, the user needs very little expertise, or even knowledge of, XML and its uses. The eWebEditPro+XML provides a user layer between the XML tags themselves and the user's actions. Scripting and commands can work together to control what tags are used by the user and where they are used. The user will, most often, not realize that they are working with XML tags, but think that they are working within a set of content parameters, definitions, or rules. The eWebEditPro2 product is a web based editor which allows the user to easily edit web page content. It contains an interface consisting of toolbars, context menus, dialogs, and other user features. Developers can customize the editor by adding commands in scripting, defining the user interface, and controlling the environment in the web page. . We see the need for several approaches to solving the problem of authoring the content. We wrote a white paper focuses on how to apply XML to human-authored content" See http://www.ektron.com/whitepaper/xmlarticle.htm From the white paper by Doug Domeny: XML is gaining acceptance today, not because it is a great technology looking for a problem, but because today's problems require its flexibility and simplicity. XML enables you to create structured and semi-structured documents that can be transferred and read by people and programs in multiple formats (for example, pages that can be read on the web, handheld devices and print). This "multi-use" of content is the driving force behind the adoption of XML technology. Today, most of the world's information is locked in paper, unsearchable documents with proprietary file formats, or web pages where search engines return too much data and not enough information. Just think about how much your company has spent to create documents that can't be easily found or distributed because they are unstructured. XML lets business users create structured documents that can be leveraged for multiple purposes in-house and exchanged to people and businesses around the world. XML breaks new ground by connecting the front office business users with the back office developers. Bill Trippe, in his article "Do XML Editors Matter?" (Transform October 2001, page 27), makes this point by saying, "You can view XML as the bridge between the two worlds of structured (relational) and unstructured (document) data." He continues, "On one hand, you have a growing need for content to be tagged at its source and maintained in a structured form. On the other hand, users are resistant to more complex tools and processes." Like a telephone line, which carries both voice and data, XML can carry information suitable for computers and people. Computer-generated XML is dynamically created by a program for B2B ecommerce or other server-to-server transaction. These applications are addressed by XML standards such as ebXML and SOAP. Human-authored content uses XML for improved search capabilities, multi-channeled publication, and syndication. These applications are addressed by standards such as MathML, NewsML, VoiceXML, and any number of custom XML dialects. There are also several multimedia demos at www.ektron.com/xml showing how a business user can author content. William Rogers CEO/President Ektron Inc. 603-594-0249 ext 106 -----Original Message----- From: Mike Champion [mailto:mc@x...] Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 1:11 PM To: xml-dev@l... Subject: "Smart ASCII" -> XML for authoring? The notion of "smart ASCII" as a way of creating structured documents whose conventions allow it to be easily transformed to XML hit me twice yesterday, once in the day job (a very significant media company uses this to achieve interoperability between diverse authoring systems) and once when reading http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipt2dw.html? open&l=136,t=grx,p=mod : "For the most part, "smart ASCII" is what you have been writing for years if you use e-mail and the Usenet. ...Asterisks surround bold or heavily emphasized phrases; dashes surround italicized or lightly XML Tags define complex content data types. The main difference between XML and HTML tags is that XML is used to structure data, while HTML is used to display data. HTML is a more loosely defined set of tags, where XML requires a more strict and structured arrangement of data. With this special tagging content management systems can use the data to perform operations such as searches and shared content. emphasized phrases; underscores introduce Book or Series Titles. ... They are all very quick to type. Anything that looks like a URL is turned into a link automatically. A fairly simple special format with curly braces and the ALT text before a colon is used to insert images, such as charts and graphs." There's a script included (a few hundred lines of well-commented Python) to do the conversion to XML. I'm of two minds on this ... on one hand it sounds like a return to the Bad Old Days and will require continuing human intervention to cleanup the inevitable not-so-smart ASCII before it can be converted to XML rather than one-time human intervention to teach markup skills to the authors. On the other, it leverages what humans do best -- deal with patterns, templates, informal conventions -- and lets computers do what they do best -- generate and parse formal syntaxes, putting XML further behind the scenes, perhaps where it belongs. I'd be interested in hearing others' reactions to this IBM DeveloperWorks article and about actual experiences in the field. My guess is that is makes a LOT of sense for simple documents (memos, weblogs, simple articles) and virtually no sense for serious technical documents where the whole point of SGML/XML is to catch the structural errors as early and automatically as possible even if this requires some pain on the part of the authors. But how big is the middle ground, and when does it pay to make authors switch over to XML? In other words, should XML stay in the background, or is it time for the end-users to add basic markup knowledge to their repertoire of skills? ----------------------------------------------------------------- The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>
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