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   RE: [xml-dev] XML-appropriate editing data structures

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That's the behavior of auto-complete in MS Access 
that causes extra quote marks when cutting and 
pasting too.  Spend some hours hunting those down.

The requirement is to be able to turn it on 
and off.  It is also useful if the auto-completes 
are customizable.  But they aren't useless. 
Many code editors do nice things like keeping 
up with all of the class methods and offering 
them as a select as one types.  

You do point out the right question:  is it interfering 
with the flow of an expert because it is designed 
to help an occasional user?

All the same issues came up when discussing SGML 
editors.  Over time it was observed that experts 
eventually moved back to ASCII editors and on 
demand parsing for document types they knew well 
(they are experts) and back to the context-based 
editors (even had names like InContext, or Context) 
for types that they only use occasionally.

Dedicated application editors are useful when 
the content types themselves require more than 
text knowledge; they require look and feel: the 
dominant characteristics of WYSIWYG.  Again, 
graphics, real time animation, etc.  Even then, 
highly associative data types still need more 
context checking (interference, race conditions, 
etc.), or the document type is too deep and 
broad for one to become an expert (eg, MIL-D-28001). 
And that is why subset DTDs and DTD-driven editors 
became useful when organizing an enterprise system: 
each authoring role created their own documents 
and these are later merged automatically.

The most requested features for report systems 
is that the interface exactly match the typical 
entry pattern for a standard report.  The rub 
is, that susses out to 'local standard' and one 
is right back to the high costs of local 
customization for otherwise shrinkwrap systems.

No free lunch.

len




 

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