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XML authoring and editing tools: characteristics and limitations.

Article Excerpt
In this article, you'll find an in-depth exploration of six distinct categories of XML document editors. With an appreciation of the characteristics and limitations of the tools available, you'll be able to choose those that best fit your needs.

Categories

I'll explore the following categories of XML editors:

* Form-based editors

* Word processors

* Text editors

* Word processors with style mappings

* Word processors with XML enhancements

* XML word processors

In assessing the relative merits of each category I consider efficiency, ease of use, cost of ownership, and ability to access document model rules (defined in a DTD or schema definition) in order to control or guide the authoring process. I also cover an issue that I call "the hidden-tags problem," which is explained fully at the end of this article. For now, it's sufficient to know that it involves the confusion that can arise when the context of the current cursor position is ambiguous because element tag delimiters are not visible. A closely related question concerning the merits of hiding XML concepts from authors is also discussed.

I'm aware that there are products on the market that defy categorization, and acknowledge that a product that appears on the surface to fit into one category might nevertheless include features that overcome the limitations that I ascribe to that category. I offer my apologies in advance to the vendors of such products, and encourage them to emphasize these features in their promotional material.

Form-Based Approach

The first category is radically different from the others, and the reason why goes to the heart of the distinction between data-centric documents (such as SOAP messages) and narrative documents (such as this article). This distinction emerged when data-centric applications were established as the primary new use of markup technologies shortly after the release of the XML standard. An avalanche of free and low-cost products quickly arrived that dispensed with the free-text editing environment in favor of a form-based approach.

Often Java-based, these products typically show a structured view of the entire document structure in one panel, from which an element can be selected, and a small set of text field boxes in another panel for editing the content and attributes of the currently selected element (see Figure...

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