Re: [xml-dev] Re: A proposal for simplify XML text editing andsubsequent

[Philip Fearon <pgfearo@googlemail.com>]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 7:48 AM, Pete Cordell <petexmldev@codalogic.com> wrote:
>> Being devil's advocate, I'm guessing that people might think this is one
>> small part of what an XML IDE does and think "that's useful.  I'll wait
>> until it turns up in Oxygen or Stylus."
>>
On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 7:47 PM, Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, it reminds me that it was years before I started using an XML editor in
> preference to a general-purpose editor, because although the XML editors
> were better at XML, they were worse at everything else.
>
> In fact, it's hard for me to believe now, but for years I used a
> general-purpose editor in preference to a Java IDE for similar reasons. It's
> not enough to do one thing well.
>
Sadly, I've learnt this lesson recently only too well.

But, going back to the context of this thread, we're comparing a
deliberately stripped down proof of concept (but with enough left in
to be viable as a working tool) with an XML IDE, General users won't
of course see it that way, as Pete rightly observes, but I hope that
those able to view this more objectively as simply a demonstration of
a concept in a working tool will.

There's another more subtle point raised here that I nearly missed,
which is that now XML IDEs give us all sort of other syntaxes like
Java, CSS, Javascript, XQuery, SQL etc. , vendors are not going to be
keen to adopt virtual formatting which, while especially suited to
XML's characteristics, has less going for it when used for non-XML
syntaxes. The message seems to be that if we want our tools to suit a
wider range of tasks, we should accept the necessary compromises -
this seems a more than reasonable case to accept the status quo.

Phil