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RE: XML-appropriate editing data structures

• To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Subject: RE: XML-appropriate editing data structures
• From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>
• Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 18:25:34 +1000
• Cc: "'Amelia A Lewis'" <amyzing@t...>, "'Henrik Martensson'" <henrik.martensson@b...>, "'XML Developer List'" <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE03F9F5FE@h...>
• Organization: Zenucom Pty Limited
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE03F9F5FE@h...>
• Reply-to: rjm@z...

personally i like the context highlighting editors that don't do
anything except highlight context. so eg a tag is in a color and you
know you haven't entered the closing > because the whole page is in a
ghastly cyan. or red if you haven't terminated a string, etc.

not a bad compromise for experts. saves time without interfering :)

rick

On Sat, 2004-04-10 at 04:28, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> That's the behavior of auto-complete in MS Access 
> that causes extra quote marks when cutting and 
> pasting too.  Spend some hours hunting those down.
> 
> The requirement is to be able to turn it on 
> and off.  It is also useful if the auto-completes 
> are customizable.  But they aren't useless. 
> Many code editors do nice things like keeping 
> up with all of the class methods and offering 
> them as a select as one types.  
> 
> You do point out the right question:  is it interfering 
> with the flow of an expert because it is designed 
> to help an occasional user?
> 
> All the same issues came up when discussing SGML 
> editors.  Over time it was observed that experts 
> eventually moved back to ASCII editors and on 
> demand parsing for document types they knew well 
> (they are experts) and back to the context-based 
> editors (even had names like InContext, or Context) 
> for types that they only use occasionally.
> 
> Dedicated application editors are useful when 
> the content types themselves require more than 
> text knowledge; they require look and feel: the 
> dominant characteristics of WYSIWYG.  Again, 
> graphics, real time animation, etc.  Even then, 
> highly associative data types still need more 
> context checking (interference, race conditions, 
> etc.), or the document type is too deep and 
> broad for one to become an expert (eg, MIL-D-28001). 
> And that is why subset DTDs and DTD-driven editors 
> became useful when organizing an enterprise system: 
> each authoring role created their own documents 
> and these are later merged automatically.
> 
> The most requested features for report systems 
> is that the interface exactly match the typical 
> entry pattern for a standard report.  The rub 
> is, that susses out to 'local standard' and one 
> is right back to the high costs of local 
> customization for otherwise shrinkwrap systems.
> 
> No free lunch.
> 
> len
> 
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  • RE: XML-appropriate editing data structures
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>

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