RE: Editing XML with HTML forms

Hi, (I love this topic :)

--- Some general ramblings fwiw... ----

Don't know what your budget is like but systems like Interwoven are made for
this type of thing. This would be the easiest solution, but the most
expensive. It also requires a bit of time to ascend the learning curve.
--
You can bring the XML doc into memory and manipulate the document using
javascript and the DOM.  So if a user clicks "Add Title" or "Add Para", you
write a new input field to the form and let the user input data. On submit
of the form you can reassemble (Roundtrip) the XML and submit it back to the
server. This takes a good chunk of work off of the server. THe user would
probably need to do a little extra XML coding for things like BOLD in the
paras. Of course there are the usual downsides to doing it on the client
(possibly lose data, browser specific, etc).
--
You could read in the schema, building your tool with XSLT. For example say
the user just created a fresh article/document.  Your schema tells you what
children can hang off of the article element.
--
If you can limit yourself to IE6 (like XMLSpy does with their plugin) you
can create your XSLT with a switch to turn on/off editing. If on, you wrap
the content in SPANs (or whatever) that have the contentEditable attribute
set to true.  With this you can work out a system similar to forms but using
a wysiwyg display of the editbale page.  This can be made to look like
MSWord (perhaps a better analaogy would be MACR Dreamweaver). (This is  ALOT
of work to get it right - the extent of which I don't know yet :-o!)
--
For things like entities, you could a have a "global_definitions.ent"
document that can be parsed to create a dropdown so the user can select the
exact thing they need which is inserted into the XML for them as a character
entity.

best,
-Rob


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Uslu, Cihan Y
> (MED)
> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 7:57 AM
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Editing XML with HTML forms
>
>
> Hi,
> I am trying to figure out how to edit my XML file on the client side by
> using HTML form with DTD/XSD, or an XML Editor Browser Plugin(Trying XML
> Spy Browser Plugin) and I am not sure which one would be the best way to
> go with.
> Is anyone in this group done something similar, I'd appreciate your
> suggestions on pointing me to the right direction and sharing your
> experience with me.
>
> Cihan
>
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
>


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