Re: [xml-dev] Heterogeneous XML editing environments - how do you cope?

[Liam Quin <liam@w3.org>]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 04:07:12PM -0400, Jonathan Robie wrote:
> I'm working with people who use a variety of tools to edit XML. Some 
> editors, like XMetaL, feel very free with non-significant whitespace, 
> providing a user interface that shields the user from the very long 
> lines their tool creates.
Note that XMetaL has (or had, at one point) options for formatting
the resulting XML, and you can (or could) also say whether lines
should wrap inside a given element in the style sheet, if you want
the authors not to make long lines.

> If I had a tool that would reliably pretty-print the XML source without 
> trashing any important whitespace formatting, I'd be fine. Are any such 
> tools really reliable enough to be trusted?

If you define "important" precisely enough, yes.

I generally use vi, oXygen and xxe, although Java programs still
tend to look so out of place on Linux that there has to be a fairly
huge benefit to them before I use them for long, so that limits
me a little.  Serna is also worth looking at for some applications.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/ * http://www.fromoldbooks.org/