WYSIWYG Editor for DocBook DTD Content?

Saqib Ali asks: "This week I saw a demo of the Tagless Editor by i4i. The editor is a plugin to Microsoft Word, which can be used to create XML based content. The plugin can handle various custom DTDs. However it can not properly handle the DocBook DTD. I was wondering if there is any WYSIWYG XML editor that can be used to edit DocBook DTD based content? Any ideas?"

Comments

Re:not necessary

[Twirlip of the Mists]

ultimately there is no way to approach even close to WYSIWYG

I think you need to go take a look at FrameMaker. It predates all this new-fangled XML hoo-hah; its native format is SGML. It is entirely WYSIWYG. Your point is thus demonstrably false.

And no offense intended likewise, but the "average person" shouldn't be trying to write XML documents if they can't understand the concept of seperating content from presentation.

Ah, the ugly face of snobbery and elitism raises its ugly head once again. Thanks for the input, GigsVT; since I'm obviously not wanted here, I'll just go back to using Microsoft Word for my documentation. You XML folks have fun playing in your little sandbox all by yourselves.

Re:not necessary

[King of the World]

I think you need to go take a look at FrameMaker. It predates all this new-fangled XML hoo-hah; its native format is SGML. It is entirely WYSIWYG. Your point is thus demonstrably false.

When displaying a docbook file tell me what font I should use, or where I should get this font information from?

Then how can what I see be what's actually encoded in the file?

Re:Conglomerate, maybe?

[DeadMoose]

Where's some info to show that it's active again? I might like to get involved.

Well first off, the page has finally been updated since I last looked at it (looks like just today actually), but even with that, it's out-of-date & misleading.

There's been a decent amount of activity on the developers' mailing list however, so you should check out the archives/subscribe to that.

Re:Docbook and WYSIWYG...

[booch]

When talking about semantic structured documents (like DocBook) it's true that WYSIWYG really doesn't have any meaning. But when someone asks for a WYSIWYG editor for such a document type, they really want something that shows a representation of the semantics. In other words, the tags themselves don't appear. Instead, the tags are used to apply (user-definable) stylesheets (usually CSS) to the document as you type. So you still have to deal with the underlying XML structure and tags, explicitly putting the tags where you want them. It's just that you get to deal with the tags as if they were styles in a word processor. So I wouldn't ever make something bold. Instead, I'd tag it as a new term, or emphasis, or a command, or whatever, and let the stylesheets make it bold, or bold and green, or a different font or background -- whatever helps me make the distinction in my head without having to specifically think about the tags.

Believe me, it's much easier to edit large amounts of DocBook without having all the tags mixed in. To me, it actually keeps the content separate from the presentation -- the tags are really just explaining how to format things, by giving things semantic meanings. Removing the tags from view lets me concentrate on the content. But the tags are still visible enough that I can add them when I change semantic contexts. (Typing in all the content and adding tags later tends to take almost twice as long.)

See my post on Morphon for a list of programs that support this way of editing XML.