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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Editor that is easy to use, generates XML under thehood, a
 is a non-geeky editor that is easy for the specification writer to use,I have yet to find such a thing, unfortunately. There is a trade-off between having the level of control a professional technical editor needs, and ease of use. Harder to decide when the editor is a professional in another field entirely, and whose definition of "easy" is possibly different from everyone else's. Most of the high-end editors (often called "Publisher" or "Documenter"(2) the specification writer is unaware that the editor is generating XML under the hood versions, with a price to match) do a good job of hiding the markup, but it usually takes a LOT of configuration with the people who will use it, to make sure everything is properly hidden. They will then complain that all control and discretion has been removed :-) (3) the generated XML is easy to understand.This decision is not the sponsor's to take, especially if they are not familiar with XML. The generated (I prefer the word "captured") XML must be easy to PROCESS; its comprehensibility by unaided and inexpert humans is of secondary importance. It is often hard to convince funding agents of this. Interesting. AFAIK they almost all do, but I wonder what alien probe(4) the editor MUST support tables. triggered this. There is of course a question mark over "support" — they all support the markup, of course: a <table> with <row>s and <cell>s is just one bunch of element types nesting inside another bunch. I suspect what they really mean is "the editor must provide a typographically-formatted rendering of tables". Then you get into murky water: rows and columns are fine, but support for spanning rows and columns, cells with paragraphic (multiline) content, row and column headings at 90° or 45°, and all the other impedimenta. And which table model: HTML, CALS, LaTeX, ISO 9573, or SAS? Did I mislead my sponsor by recommending that specifications be written in a way that can be processed by software? I suspect they may have misled themselves. As Thomas Passin wrote on 27/05/2023 16:57, A specification written in Word can be processed with XML techniquesThis is the key. If a Word document is formed with RIGID adherence to a specified set of protocols using Named Styles, it can be processed very similarly to an XML document conforming to a schema, with some additional XSLT effort. Many people on this list are in a position to do the appropriate analyses, come up with a recommendation, and write the necessary software. A lot will depend on the degree to which the sponsor is already familiar with XML. Peter 
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