Ease of Use in XML Editing
June 29, 2004
What makes for ease of use in setting up editors and authors to begin using XML for content development? How much of it is making the DTD or schema useful and intuitive? How much of it is customizing the editorial tool to make it productive?
Or am I even asking the right questions?
Bear in mind that I am referring to the average content creator, and not necessarily someone who is comfortable with XML or even something like HTML markup. Imagine that this person, like most computer users, has created most text using a commercial word processor, an email client, and web-based forms.
Your thoughts?
Posted by Bill Trippe at June 29, 2004 6:30 PM
Bill Trippe was wondering:
"What makes for ease of use in setting up editors and authors to begin using XML for content development? How much of it is making the DTD or schema useful and intuitive? How much of it is customizing the editorial tool to make it productive?"
I think there's a puzzling dichotomy which most people who have used standard office tools and web-based forms fall upon. First, office tools such as Word are great at doing one thing: word processing. Using it for everything is often the mistake (like some people use Excell to do everything).
Although Word can "do the job", especially with its WordML format and the fact that you can insert a DTD "any time" (as read on xml-doc, didn't try it) the first drawback to using XML is finding a WYSYWYG editor which looks familiar enough to be used for production.
Second, switching from a simple word processor (which can become much more, granted) to using XSLT or any processor to manage your desired outputs can become a nightmare for the user you describe. If training is not provided or time to learn on-the-fly, it's often unfeasible. Using XML, unfortunately, is still a fairly technical affair and a large amount of time and training must be invested if one is to make the full switch to XML.
The things needed in my mind for XML to be accepted generally are a simple, convivial yet effective word processor which -- unfortunately -- copies the behaviour of Word; and two, a real tech dive to manage processors which give you a satisfactory output.
My 0.02¢
Christian Roy
http://www.neodoc.biz
Comments for this entry have been closed.
Bill Trippe was wondering:
"What makes for ease of use in setting up editors and authors to begin using XML for content development? How much of it is making the DTD or schema useful and intuitive? How much of it is customizing the editorial tool to make it productive?"
I think there's a puzzling dichotomy which most people who have used standard office tools and web-based forms fall upon. First, office tools such as Word are great at doing one thing: word processing. Using it for everything is often the mistake (like some people use Excell to do everything).
Although Word can "do the job", especially with its WordML format and the fact that you can insert a DTD "any time" (as read on xml-doc, didn't try it) the first drawback to using XML is finding a WYSYWYG editor which looks familiar enough to be used for production.
Second, switching from a simple word processor (which can become much more, granted) to using XSLT or any processor to manage your desired outputs can become a nightmare for the user you describe. If training is not provided or time to learn on-the-fly, it's often unfeasible. Using XML, unfortunately, is still a fairly technical affair and a large amount of time and training must be invested if one is to make the full switch to XML.
The things needed in my mind for XML to be accepted generally are a simple, convivial yet effective word processor which -- unfortunately -- copies the behaviour of Word; and two, a real tech dive to manage processors which give you a satisfactory output.
My 0.02¢
Christian Roy
Posted by Christian Roy at July 5, 2004 12:13 AMhttp://www.neodoc.biz