XML input control

I'm fairly new to this kind of work so I'm not sure wether this is  
the right time or place to raise this type of issues or wether this  
one has been discussed before.

But nevertheless. I would like to suggest an extension to HTML that  
would certainly make life easier for developers of CMS and CMSish  
apps: an input control that accepts XML content, specified by a  
schema. I'm thinking of something like the following:

  <xmldoc name="mydoc" schemalocation="myschema.xsd" ... />

The semantics would be similar to that of a textarea, except that the  
client should be responsible for returning xml markup that conforms  
to the schema. Correspondingly a basic implementation would involve a  
textarea that is validated against the schema before the data is  
submitted.

More advanced support could include various forms of XML markup  
editors and other types of "smart editing tools", partly through the  
use of plugins tailormade to specific shemas. The big difference  
versus existing Java/JavaScript plugins is that they would be  
*forced* to produce valid XML in all situations. Another difference  
is that the developer would have complete control of the input  
without knowing exactly how it is generated. Users could be offered a  
choice of input methods. Expert users could use generic XML editors  
while children and  grandparents would probably prefer more human  
friendly input tools, restricted to specific schemas.

An additional advantage is that such a setup will lead to a  
standardization of structured content input across applications. For  
instance, expert users (and a lot of those creating content through  
CMS's are experts) would only need to learn one generic XML editor  
for *all* applications.

--
Henrik

Received on Thursday, 22 March 2007 18:55:10 UTC