XML Editors - Word 2000??

[Matthew Sergeant (EML)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Steven Livingstone, ITS, SENM 
> 
> I have had a look at a few editors now.
> 
> One thing that (at least the ones I have looked at so for) is common in
> them
> is the XMl Notepad look - i.e. A line with a couple of tags and space to
> insert your text.
> 
> To me it seems that this is pretty much the only way you could do this,
> but
> feedback I have had from people not knowledgeble about XML is that they
> don't consider them serious editors (although I happily work with them).
> 
> What other methods do/are XML editors using to make it very much easier
> for
> users. I imagine some intelligent package which knew where you were in a
> particular document and, working with a DTD, could provide you with a list
> of possible tags which could be applied and relevent attributes (if these
> apply). Of course the DTD would have to be provided as a template for the
> user (as would any style sheets).
> 
> 
	What would constitute my perfect XML editor would be an extension of
the ideas/base provided by XED. It's a really simple text editor, following
the CUA key guidlines (no learning emacs keystrokes, or hacking lisp to
reconfigure all your keys!). When you type "<" it assumes you're entering a
tag (unless you hit "<" again, in which case it types &lt; for you), and
provides a drop down list of optional tags, as you type the first letters in
the tag it uses that abbreviation to minimise the list of possibles, until
you're happy with the tag (either by selecting from the menu, or typing ">",
or starting to fill in attributes). Currently XED doesn't use a DTD, but if
it did I think it would be a killer editor. For XML proffesionals anyway -
maybe not for first time users. But after a few goes I think anyone could
easily get the hang of using this.

	I'm thinking of coding something simple like this in Perl/Tk (I know
people would probably prefer Java, but it won't come from me), so if
anyone's interested in this sort of thing, available under the GNU GPL, let
me know, and we'll see if maybe we can collaborate.

	Matt.


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