XPath 2.0: Getting more from the IDE?

[Follow on from: Re:  XPath 2.0 Best Practice: wrap the first
node of every path expression within schema-element?]

On 26/03/2008 Andrew Welch Wrote:

>XSLT IDEs already provide basic intellisense given an input document,
>but that could be so much better given a schema.

>Imagine a nice red underline below an incorrect XPath, or
>control-spacing your way down from the root.  Or perhaps renaming an
>element in the schema and having it renamed throughout your stylesheet
>(and beyond that - renaming it in an XPath and it being changed
>throughout).

>Writing XPaths should be a case of "slash, ctrl->space, enter, slash,
ctrl->space, enter" :)

Useful ideas on smarter intellisense and expression coloring such as
error-underlines for XPath 2.0. I've gone the "slash, [optional]
type-chars [auto-pick], tab, slash..."  route by the way. XPath
Intellisense is also something I mentioned briefly in my blog last
month:

http://sketchpath.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html

Having a two-way binding between the XSD and the XPath also provides a
number of opportunities which I would be keen to explore in future
releases of an XPath 2.0 tool

Any other suggestions for improving the user interface environment in
the schema-aware world of XPath 2.0? I'm keen to cater for non-XSLT
developers too.

Also, are there specific risks to watch out for? (Mindful of advice I
recieved from a previous post to this list. This advice was related to
not giving the impression of an imperative language when providing a
'step-into' debugger for XPath)

Thanks

Phil Fearon
http://www.sketchpath.com