Re: Syntax-driven editing (was RE: DTD formal syntax)

[Jim Mehl <mehl@ihot.com>]

Thanks, Murali, it was indeed helpful. Things to think about, indeed.
Off hand Field1|Field2 would be radio buttons leading to text entry
fields, or other selection screens. The nice thing with XML is that
we're dealing with simple trees. I think that makes designing a UI
interface simpler than some other data models.

Jim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Murali Mani" <mani@CS.UCLA.EDU>
> I also misinterpreted it -- so what you want is some way by which the
> parser will parse the DTD, determine which are the attributes and text
> nodes for which text values have to be entered, and then create a form for
> the user to enter the text values.
>
> The above is clear, and it is not very difficult, though I am sure it will
> be very useful for several applications. I think mostly you will have to
> write your own software for doing this -- combine it with the Xerces
> parser -- the Xerces parser will provide you the API for determining all
> the text values that need to be filled in -- you can navigate through the
> DTD recursively to get to all the element declarations.
>
> The issue comes when there is a choice as someone pointed earlier -- for
> example, suppose you have
> Record -> Field1 | Field2
>
> So what should your display show?? -- off hand, I would say, the display
> would show both Field1 and Field2, the user has to enter the fields by
> looking at the DTD to not make such errors as entering values for both
> Field1, and Field2, finally I think when the user submits the form, you
> should construct the document, and try to validate it against the DTD --
> again this can be done by the Xerces parser.
>
> Anyway, hope it was helpful.
>
> <warning>speaking for himself only</warning>
>
> cheers and regards - murali.