WebDAV for specification authoring

I'd like to suggest some additions to the "XML Document Production Tools"
page at: http://www.w3.org/2001/03/09-XML-document-production-tools

In the WebDAV working group we have been very happy with using the
capabilities of WebDAV clients and servers <http://www.webdav.org/> to edit
specifications. For specification authoring, WebDAV provides overwrite
prevention, thus allowing multiple people to work on a specification safely.

A complete list of WebDAV implementations can be found at:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/, about 1/2 way down the page.

Of particular interest for XML specification authoring in the W3C are the
following:

Clients:

XML Spy 3.5 :: XML editor that natively supports WebDAV
http://www.xmlspy.com/
(The creator, Altova, is a W3C Member, so you might be able to get free
copies.)

GoLive 5 :: This is really a Web site authoring tool, so it probably isn't
very appropriate for specification authoring.

Dreamweaver 4 :: Another site authoring tool, also with DAV support.

There are also three clients that map a WebDAV server to a drive letter
under Windows:
WebIFS <http://www.webifs.com/products/webifs/index.html>
TeamDrive <http://www.teamstream.com/product.htm>
WebDrive <http://www.riverfrontsoftware.com/webdrive.htm>

So, if you have a favorite XML editor that doesn't yet have WebDAV support,
you can edit it on a DAV-mapped Windows drive. I've used all of these
clients, and they work pretty well.

If you're not on Windows, there are some other solutions.

Macintosh:

Apple MacOS X has a feature called "webdavfs" that allows you to map a
WebDAV server to a desktop-visible disk drive. You then use Mac applications
normally.

Pre-Mac OS X folk can use Goliath <http://www.webdav.org/goliath/> to drag
from the DAV server to a local desktop, then drag it back to the DAV server
when done.

Unix/Linux:

Cadaver <http://www.webdav.org/cadaver/> is a command line tool (the
equivalent of "ftp" for DAV) that allows you to GET, PUT, LOCK, UNLOCK, etc.
Hey, there is even BeOS support for cadaver: http://beos.jetnet.co.uk/bedav/

You can also use sitecopy <http://www.lyra.org/sitecopy/> to replicate a
remote site locally, then upload it again. Sitecopy doesn't use locking,
though. Sitecopy supports most Unixes.

Servers:

On the server side, there is Jigsaw <http://www.w3.org/Jigsaw/> which now
has WebDAV support.

The mod_dav module for Apache <http://www.webdav.org/mod_dav/> is open
source, and in widespread use.


If you are interested in editing of non-HTML documents, there is the Office
2000 suite for Windows (Word 2000, Excel 2000, PowerPoint 2000), all of
which work well using WebDAV.

- Jim

Received on Friday, 15 June 2001 20:26:59 UTC