Re: Open Source XML Editor

[Marcus Carr <mrc@allette.com.au>]

Michael Smith wrote:

> Even with the best editing app in the world, I think document authors
> find structured authoring simple only when the content they need to
> mark up is simple -- that is, it has a simple structure and lacks a
> variety of discrete classes of "objects" that need to be marked up.
>
> Marking up technical documentation, for example, is inherently
> difficult because it has a relatively complex structure and variety of
> discrete kinds of objects -- variables, filenames, code examples, and
> so on -- that authors must recognize and mark up appropriately.

I agree, and would even go further. Liora Alshuler wrote a great article about
ten years ago about how writers aren't necessarily at all intimidated by
markup. After all, they have a lot of understanding about what they're doing -
they probably wouldn't be writing about the topic if they didn't. The moral
was to spend time on the analysis, and design a succinct and appropriate
structure in concert with the writing team. Then even "complex" documents need
not be difficult to author to. A good "guided syntax editor" is an invaluable
tool for a system like this.


--
Regards,

Marcus Carr                      email:  mrc@allette.com.au
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Allette Systems (Australia)      www:    http://www.allette.com.au
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"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
       - Einstein