From: Dan Kalikow (drdan@kalikow.com)
Date: Mon Apr 24 2000 - 11:00:12 PDT
Hi Dan --
FWIW, I did a pretty complete survey of the state of XML-editing SW (over
the period from summer-fall 1999) as part of my last gig at the now-defunct
Reed Elsevier Technology Group -- I recall looking at about 9 or 10 tools.
Agreed, XML Spy is non-intuitive. The freeware wasn't competitive, also.
XMetaL came out on top, judged on a multi-dimension rating scale. Of
course none of the tools was perfect. XMetaL lacks some of the nifty
bells-'n'-whistles that the more mature HomeSite offers for HTML -- at
least I haven't found them yet -- and it doesn't have tree-view. However,
they promised such a view in their next release. You can edit in
color-coded pure-ASCII if you want; there's a good tag view; and an
_editable_ WYSIWYG view too, that I find very useful for free-flow writing.
XMetaL can be used to produce HTML. It offers validation.
Whatever code you produce, be it in the ASCII or WYSIWYG view, is always
internally prettyprinted, which eases proofreading. There's table and
styling support too, though I haven't used them in awhile. The price-point
is aggressive enough that I think they'll reach their goal of having XMetaL
become a generic multipurpose XML editor, as XML takes a more and more
central role in the future of the web.
I've stopped using HomeSite; I use XMetaL (running fine on my W2K laptop)
for the little HTML I need, and hand-code the stuff that I haven't figured
out how to get XMetaL to do.
/Dan
PS -- I can't tell whether this reply will get to the [IRR]s -- while its
Sender was tbtf-irregulars-approval@world.std.com, the From and the To:
don't point to tbtf-irregulars@world.std.com. Your call.
At 09:04 AM 4/24/2000 -0700, Dan Kohn wrote:
>I'm trying to edit an Internet-Draft using the RFC 2629 DTD
><http://www.normos.org/ietf/rfc/rfc2629.txt> and am !@#$%^&* at the pathetic
>state of the (free) tools. XML Spy 3.0b2 can edit in text mode, but the
>table view drag and drop is completely buggy, and the interface is
>non-intuitive for non database applications. HTML-Kit has a plug-in MSXML
>validator but no WYSIWYG or table/tree mode for prompting. XML Notepad is a
>joke.
>
>Can you recommend an XML editor that has (preferably) 3 modes: source,
>table/tree, and something close to fill-in-the-form WYSIWYG? XMetaL seems
>like the best bet from <http://www.xmlsoftware.com/editors/>, but I wanted
>to check before shelling out $150.
>
>Also, is anyone working on XSL for the rfc2629.dtd? It seems like the
>perfect application for XSL.
>
>TIA.
>
> - dan
>--
>Daniel Kohn <mailto:dan@dankohn.com>
>tel:+1-425-602-6222 fax:+1-425-602-6223
>http://www.dankohn.com
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