Re: Advice on XML editor development

Peter Murray-Rust (peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Mon, 27 Apr 1998 20:37:25


At 14:16 27/04/98 +0000, Matt Mower wrote:
[...]
>I'm not familiar enough with the terminology here. I'll tell you what I
>think the difference is. A tree based editor is something like XMLPro
>which displays a document as a hierarchy of objects, a stream based
>editor is something like composer where you type free-text (albeit in a
>structured manner).

Yes - unless someone corrects me :-)

>If the above is accurate then my intention is for this to be a
>tree-based editor. With DTD elements acting as "objects" that can be
>manipulated sensibly.

Fine. The exciting thing about XML is that this is impossible in HTML and
so the tree-based philosophy opens up completely new worlds.
>
>> It should support ID/IDREF and xml:link in a graphical manner (e.g.
>>dragon-drop)
>>
>
>I'm not sure what this.

An IDREF attribute points to a unique ID attribute in the same document.
Essentially a link. Look at the source of rec.xml - some examples there.

xml:link allows hyperlinks. How are you going to introduce them into the
document?

>
[...]
>>Note that there is a lot of experience in the SGML (sic) community about
>>creating editors and it's worth talking to experienced people and getting
>>demos to find out exactly what the range of things you really want is.
>>>
>
>Can you suggest a forum in which I could raise this issue?

Here. I have :-). Creating an XML editor is absolutely mainstream for
XML-DEV. The point is that many people reading this list will have experience.

[...]
>
>I have reliability concerns about swing. In principle though I do agree
>with you.

I have bugs. If that means the same thing...

P.