What XML Tools Do You Use?

Omega1045 asks: "What XML tools do you use? XML Spy? EditPad? A pen, notepad, scanner, and a good OCR program? XML is now becoming more than just hype. XML, SOAP Web Services, and Enterprise Integration (EI) are really taking off from the number and type of contract opportunities I am seeing and receiving. Until recently, I was doing most of my XML by hand. Other than the nostalgia for those early HTML days, it is really eating into my time. I have started trying XML Spy, but to buy it will be a big hit in the wallet (which I am willing to do if it is the best thing out there). What does Slashdot recommend?"

Comments

xmlspy

[rogue_gambit]

I use xmlspy at work, and it really is the best thing I have tried.

Particularly the schema editor and the Authentic component (which is now free (as in beer)).

In litteraly no time you can throw together a complex schema and make a nice gui interface for entering data which validates against said schema.

It is definitely pricey and I can't say that I would have bought it for myself, but if you have to deal with a lot of XML then it is truly worth it.

First post?

Interactive structured drawing

[derinax]

I built an entire web-based interactive Expo map using Sodipodi (sodipodi.sourceforge.net). It was very easy to edit the native XML code (actually, SVG). I found the combination of Sodipodi and vi was as powerful and far more flexible in terms of optimizing the resultant code (e.g. search and replace &macros) than a proprietary structured program like Illustrator.

God, I can't say enough about how cool Sodipodi has become.

Good luck finding a proper viewer for the interactive code, however. Mozilla+svg has not even been of alpha quality-- all proofing had to be in Windows, IE + Adobe's SVG Viewer.

A good, free choice

[jbrandon]

A strong consesus is emerging around a new standard.

vim and my brain

[GusherJizmac]

and xmllint.

Xerlin & Saxon

[hswerdfe]

Xerlin is an Editor, its fairly basic and needs improvment but it usually works good.
http://www.xerlin.org

Saxon is an XSLT processor
http://saxon.sourceforge.net/

and hey they are both open source and based on java.

jEdit

[HRbnjR]

jEdit is what I use. It's Free Software, and runs great on Linux. It includes syntax highlighting, XML Schema validation, XML Insert (auto-completion, prompting from schema), XPath evaluation, and XSLT transformation. This functionality is built ontop of the great Apache XML tools - so it is quite complete and interoperable.

jEdit is also great for more than just XML too! I used to be mainly an Emacs user - but I spend my days in Eclipse (for Java and C++) and jEdit (for everything else) now.

VIM rules it all

[mystran]

I've tried few editors, but VIM (with scripting for folding and automatic adding of end-tags) is best I've found for both my XML and XHTML needs.

Right, do you mean European XML or African XML?

[Creosote]

Bridgekeeper: What ... is the best tool for editing XML?

Arthur: Do you mean datacentric XML or docucentric XML?

Bridgekeeper: Why, I don't know th...augghhh!

I'd agree with fm6 that one tool doesn't fit all. XML is evolving away from its SGML roots in heavy-duty document production into two "forks", one that continues to emphasize documents and uses a lot of mixed-content elements, the other that is trying hard to be a database and relying therefore on schemas that provide data typing. The earlier generation of XML editors that emerged from SGML editors, like XMetal and FrameMaker, are much more comfortable to use for functions where you essentially need an XML word processor.

Someone has already mentioned jEdit as a Java editor with useful XML/XSL plugins. I'd add, especially for Mac OS X users, the oXygen XML editor, also Java-based, which provides a very comfortable editing environment with tag autocompletion and built in well-formedness checking and validation (including for XHTML documents, making it a nice Web editor as well). It supports XPath queries, has a built-in DTD generator [from well-formed XML], has a tree structure editor, and more. It's proprietary but not expensive.