Re: Why WYSIWYG for XML???

["Mark Baker" <listsub -at- analecta -dot- com>]

Laurel Hickey wrote


> In this context, WYSIWYG is simply a tool... or feature ...that allows
> easier conceptulization of content categories (and modules), allows
> easier compiling and sorting of content and easier checking of
> structure.

You may be confusing WYSIWYG with graphical displays in general. You can
certainly help the lucidity of an authoring interface by making the
different content catagories visually distinct. But this is precisely what
WYSIWYG does not do well. Different catagories of content are often
formatted identically in the final document. If you need them to be made
distinct at the authoring stage then WYSIWYG is a bad choice, though some
other form of graphical presentation of the desired catagories may be a good
choice.

> There's no reason a good XML app can't give you both... For
> HTML, Dreamweaver gives you both! You can even split the view to see
> markup and WYSIWYG at the same time. I'd expect nothing less from a
> dedicated XML app.

But when you are creating HTML you are creating the final display format in
a single step. In a dedicated XML app you might be creating a collection of
normalized content elements that will be processed and combined with other
content in a downstram process. There is no guarantee that there is any
sensible way to create a WYSIWYG view of this data, and you certainly could
not create it in a WYSIWYG view because that view would not show you the
catagories that are required of the metadata that must be supplied.

The important thing is that the author be able to validate their work. If
they are creating the final display, then seeing a WYSIWYG is a good
validation tool. If they are creating semantically tagged data, WYSIWYG is a
bad validation tool that hides the catagories and the metadata that the
author is responsible for creating.

> I'd also expect it to allow me to switch between
> style sheets to facilitate the above however best suited me. It's just
> CONTENT. I'm not hurting it!
>
> A WYSIWYG tool like Word has never been used just as a "monolithic tool"
> ... It's for writing and compiling content that then goes into programs
> like Dreamweaver and InDesign, etc.

Then you are not using it as a WYSIWYG tool are you? You are using it as a
graphical word processor that can spit out styled text. The WYG is not
applied until you get to Dreamweaver. You are, in fact, using a modular
development process. What you require of the authoring tool is that it
produce text with style names attached. Word is a good tool for producing
such text and you will take advantage of it's graphical display capabilities
to make it easier to see the styled text as you create it.

This works fine for this particular modular process and Word is a good
authoring tool to choose for this purpose. However, there are many different
modular processes and some require more from the author than simply styled
text. For those, other authoring tools are required.

---
Mark Baker
Analecta Communications
www.analecta.com
+1 613 614 5881



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