Re: [unrev-II] Editing an arbitrary XML document

From: Eric Armstrong (eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com)
Date: Wed Jul 26 2000 - 12:17:25 PDT

  • Next message: Eric Armstrong: "Re: [unrev-II] Editing an arbitrary XML document"

    Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
    >
    > [I'm cc'ing this response to ohs-dev@bootstrap.org, in the hope that we
    > continue this thread exclusively on that list.]
    >
    I didn't see it in my inbox there, so I'll continue it here.

    > 1. ...I'm not so sure defaulting to an outline view
    > and allowing the simple creation of style sheets is such a bad
    > solution....the user could open up a stylesheet editor and choose to
    > display <b> as inline text, in which case the appropriate XSL
    > stylesheet would be created....
    >
    > 2. For our own purposes, your proposal to standardize on a set of
    > inlinable elements makes a lot of sense. While it may be difficult to
    > create universal XML editors because of the problems you stated, we
    > could certainly make it very easy to create universal OHS editors.
    >
    I think we are close.

    To summarize, the original post argued down to "leave XML as it is
    and put the smarts in the editor". In yesterday's meeting, you also
    agreed that it makes a lot of sense to define a minimum set of inline
    tags that the editor recognizes -- <b>, <i>, <u>, for example. (Tags
    like <a href=""> are more problematic, but probably manageable.)

    My favorite example is <def> to indicate a term that is defined in
    the current paragraph. By default, <def> would display hierarchically.
    But a global editor default could be specified that causes <def>
    to display inline as though it were <i>. For some file types, that
    global default could be overridden so that <def> reverts to a
    hierarchical display (aka "structure element").

    So far so good. What I find missing in my original proposal, though,
    is a solution to the "invisible node" problem. That's the one where
    we want to make <sect1><title>....</title><sect1> appear as
    <sect1>....</sect1> in the display (although the actual structure
    remains intact).

    My current thinking is that there is a fairly standard set of
    such elements that could usefully be specified as "invisible",
    using a global default in the editor. Here are two examples:

    Node Structure Displays as
    -------- -------------- -----------
      <title> <sect1> <sect1>...
                  <title>...
                
                <head> <head>...
                  <title>...

      <name> <bookmark> <bookmark>...
                  <name>...

                <contact> <contact>...
                  <name>...

    The fact that <title> and <name> occur in multiple kinds of
    files in a similar role -- as a "visible identifier" for a
    node -- probably warrants their inclusion as a global defaults
    in the editor. There are undoubtedly more that could be added
    to the list. As with inline elements, the behaviour could be
    overridden for individual files.

    And that, I think, is a complete solution to the problem of
    easily editing (semi-arbitrary) XML files with an editor,
    and doing so in an intelligent outline form. This solution
    does not require something so grand as an XSL stylesheet
    (which has the power to completely specify the print-format
    for a document). In contrast, it can be implemented with
    a few small lists and a simple interface.

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