RE: Open Source XML Editor

[Danny Ayers <danny@panlanka.net>]

<- 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.

Hmm - "...they probably wouldn't be writing about the topic..." seems to
imply that everyone that wants to write XML documents wants to write about
XML! I'm sure this isn't what you meant. There is an important (chestnut)
point here though - the people writing the documents don't necessarily want
to know about the mechanics. Anyone can build a passable web site using
something like Dreamweaver without knowing any HTML. i.e. someone has to
specify the structure of the XML (write DTD/Schema), and some poor sod has
to do the inputting - but they don't necessarily have to be the same person.

What would be nice would be a WYSIWYG XML doc editor that had it's toolbar
buttons, form areas etc. defined by the DTD, so it would look like a
(application-specific) word processor.  I don't know - can any editor do
this yet?


Cheers,
Danny.