Re: Editing tools

> In the notes to the meeting there was a discussion of tools that can be used
> - one of the reasons for working with an XHTML source instead of the spec dtd
> was that it is easier to find friendly HTML editing tools than XML editing
> tools. (Especially for those of us with Macintoshes)

Yes I saw that (can't say I'd agree with it from personal experience,
but still it's a reasonable point of view) but what I wasn't sure about
was the purpose of the list of editors. If the reason for hand authoring
XHTML is that some people are more familiar with (X)HTML editors, then 
surely they'll just use whatever editor they are used to, won't they?
Or is there an intention that W3C "Recommend" some particular set of
editing tools for document production?

> For a number of collaborators working in native XML is not a helpful
> suggestion, and for others it is less efficient

It seems a sad reflection on XML if that is really the case.
I thought the whole point of XML (for document use rather than as a data
holder) was that one could use an efficient and concise markup closely
tailored to the job at hand and then have production tools expand that
out to whatever necessary presentation forms were required.
In the particular example of W3C documents it's surely much more
"efficient" to use the front matter markup from xmlspec and have that
expand into the boilerplate HTML/CSS required, than to type the latter
directly. It is also _far_ easer to constrain things so that the result
meets the document guidelines.

>  - overuse injuries are
> aggravated by dealing with the tag trivia. Not that working with emacs (or vi
> or notepad or whatever) is evil, just that it is not for everyone.

Yes but I was suggesting emacs be listed under the "XML aware" editors
rather than an acsii editor like notepad. If by "overuse injuries" you
mean typing </foo> too often then emacs, like other XML aware editors,
will automatically insert such tagging, offer context sensitive
alternatives, validate the document etc.  I don't mean to start an
"editor wars" thread (fun but unproductive, as a rule) just trying to
understand the criterion being used to generate this list of editing
systems (and what use is planned for the list).

David

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Received on Thursday, 8 March 2001 06:17:12 UTC