[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: XML-appropriate editing data structures
Henrik, The features you ask for (block vs. inline, tables, images, indenting, spacing) can not be automatically detected by reading a user-written schema. I think you're confusing a general-purpose XML editor with a very specific XML editor tailored to specific XML vocabulary(s). I guess I just don't see this as a 'programmer' vs. 'author' issue. I think a step to alleviate the problems you mentioned would be for general purpose XML editors to provide a 'preview in browser', 'run stylesheet' and/or 'run XML processing pipeling' options. -----Original Message----- From: Henrik Martensson [mailto:henrik.martensson@b...] Sent: Friday, April 09, 2004 8:56 AM To: Bob Foster Cc: XML Developer List Subject: Re: XML-appropriate editing data structures On Thu, 2004-04-08 at 16:46, Bob Foster wrote: > It seems quite likely that the utility of the outline view has > something > to do with the nature of the document. If you write very large > DocBook-like documents, the outline view is pretty much useless; all it Outline views are _particularly_ useful when editing large documents, provided that you can hide minor block elements, such as paragraphs, admonitions, tables, etc. One thing that I haven't seen in an XML editor yet, but that would be very nice, is an outline view that works over multiple files. After reading several messages in this thread I feel a rant coming on, but I'd like to say this first: As a programmer, I appreciate the difficulties in creating an XML editor that is fast, provides all the features necessary for structured authoring, and manages to format a document for onscreen display. I won't pretend to be half as good a programmer as the people who have written the XML editors I am about to trash in the following paragraphs. I am going to look at the issue solely from the viewpoint of a professional technical writer. Now, the rant. If you are under 18, or have a high blood pressure, please skip this: As a writer I have a hard time understanding why most of the current crop of XML editors have user interfaces that are a lot worse than my old SGML editor. (WordPerfect with an SGML plugin.) Nor can they measure up to other old time SGML/XML tools, such as ADEPT Editor, FrameMaker+SGML, Documentor, and others. (Yes, I know that from a developers point of view, some of these were just horrible. Some were not exactly ideal writng tools either, it's just that they seem better than many of the things that are around today.) Most of the current crop of XML editors, XMetaL and Arbortext Publisher are exceptions, seem to be little more than text editors with syntax highlighting. This is not what I want in an authoring tool that I am going to use several hours a day, every day. Text editors with syntax highlighting may suit programmers, but that is very different from being suitable for authors. XML editors must make it easy to write and structure documents. Context sensitive element dialogs and validation are necessary, of course, but they are not enough, not by a long shot. For example, while you do not need the sophisticated styling of a word processor or DTP program, the ability to format block elements and inline elements differently is absolutely vital. You also need to distinguish titles visually, there must be support for table formatting, etc. Documents often contain images, or other embedded media objects, so support for that is also a necessity. Of course the features listed above are a bare minimum. In an editor for professional use I also expect things like change bars, integration with a DMS, a preview of formatted documents (limited use, I know, but quite often I operate within those limits), and a host of other features. As for tag coloring: It is a good thing to make tags visually distinct, but treating tags as text with a different color is not good enough. For example, it should not be possible to edit the tag name, particularly not in such a way that the document does not validate. My personal preference is for editors that denote tags with some sort of graphical symbol. Editors that just lock the tags so they can't be edited are technically sufficient, though they may lack a bit of visual appeal. I have seen "XML editors" that rely on the insertion of line breaks and indentation with whitespace to format documents on screen. This is just bad. For one thing, when you open a document created in another XML tool, there may not even be any line breaks or indents in the document. Editing a 300 kB XML document that appears on a single line in an editor is no fun. Most of the discussion in this thread has been about XML editors from the point of view of developers. Quite natural, I suppose. This isn't the xml-author mailing list. However, it seems to me that from a users point of view, the average quality of structured authoring tools have been lowered in recent years. The best XML authoring tools are those that have been around since the days of SGML. There are only a few of those left. The new generation tools just is not as good. Rounding off the rant by widening my perspective a bit, I am aware that there are advantages to the newer tools. Price is one thing. Portability is another, because many of them are written in Java. However, if the tools aren't good enough for everyday use, portability does not matter. (I still haven't found a really decent XML editor that runs under Linux.) I believe that looking at text editors and IDEs, and using them as a basis for creating XML editors is the wrong thing to do. It would be more useful to look at the current leaders in XML editing, i.e. XMetaL and Arbortext Epic, and figure out how to beat them. /Henrik ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/index.php>
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