Re: [xml-dev] Is "Hand Authoring" XML still a critical use case ?

[Philip Fearon <pgfearo@googlemail.com>]

On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 6:46 PM, David Lee <dlee@calldei.com> wrote:
>
> What I'm suggesting is the lack of the equivilent for authoring in XML
> Format but "Act Like Word" application.
> (YEs I know there are some tools like Oxygen ... but IMHO not enough and not
> good enough).

As a kind of eccentric 'proof of concept' I developed a 'raw' XML
editor as a Word addin a couple of years ago. So, it didn't just act
like Word, it was Word!

I included the usual syntax coloring, tree-view, XPath evaluator
(using Saxon), namespace 'explainer' and schema validator, but didn't
pursue this freeware project due to low takeup and other priorities.

If you're curious as to how Word might look like as an XML IDE,
there's an old video of this project at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpmgHgogftU

There were actually lots of benefits in using Word as an XML platform,
like spell-checking, review features, auto-indents, find and replace,
handling of large files etc. The biggest issue was managing the addin
deployment, this is less of an issue with Word 2010...

Phil Fearon
http://qutoric.com