norman.walsh.name: Comments on /2004/02/19/interophttp://norman.walsh.name/2004/02/19/interop/comments.atom2012-05-22T18:19:20.323602ZComment 1 on /2004/02/19/interophttp://norman.walsh.name/2010/09/25/oauth#comment00012004-02-21T03:44:25Z2004-02-21T03:44:25ZMatej Ceplda39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709

There _are_ free structured authoring tools, but they really suck. If anybody would be able to combine strength of Amaya (and extend it to at least Docbook) with ease of use of LyX, I would be immediately game.

Comment 2 on /2004/02/19/interophttp://norman.walsh.name/2010/09/25/oauth#comment00022004-02-22T09:22:11Z2004-02-22T09:22:11ZDave Pawson

And still no one addresses this difficulty of enabling Word users to edit in XML. It comes up so often and its a real market addressed in isolation so many times for solid business reasons. I wonder why not?

Comment 3 on /2004/02/19/interophttp://norman.walsh.name/2010/09/25/oauth#comment00032004-02-24T16:23:37Z2004-02-24T16:23:37Zbryan bry@itnisk.com

Basically the benefit of Word is that a user knows a simple subset of the interface(since hardly any users really know a lot of Word) and can use that. Any Word extended to allow editing of xml will have side effects in user behavior that abrogate this benefit, either the side effect will be that the word interface will have so many extra buttons and steps that one has to take to use them that it is no longer word, or two that the word document itself must be structured, for example if I want a tree of -subjects -subject -description 'xml editors' -related 'markup'-/related -/description -/subject -/subjects I might say that the user has to use subjectlist.dot to make their document, use the subjects style for the list, and that every item in that list can have a number of paragraphs, the style names being related to the output names. If you have a dialect that requires -image @src='some.gif' -subtext a picture of our xml editor -/subtext -/image then you need to be able to process words flat structure and get a style image-subtext directly following an image in order to build your hierarchy. This is an already solved problem, I know as I worked on the/a solution, however it requires the user will use Word in a structured manner, which most users are not in the habit of doing.

From tests etc. I've done the same solution can be done for Open Office Writer, and I suppose, Star Office Writer, etc.

Comment 4 on /2004/02/19/interophttp://norman.walsh.name/2010/09/25/oauth#comment00042004-03-30T00:06:31Z2004-03-30T00:06:31ZWilliam McVeyda39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709

The xxe application (XMLmind XML Editor: http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/) is actually quite nice. Is free (for the standard edition), and very powerful. It has good DocBook support integrated in by default and is flexible enough to handle extensions (the XML language, as well as to the app). I'm in no way affiliated with XMLMind, other than being a happy user of their product.