Re: [docbook] Re: XML Editors

[ed nixon <ed.nixon@LynnParkPlace.org>]

Steinar Bang wrote:

>>>>>>Robert P J Day <rpjday@mindspring.com> writes:
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>having been through the "which editor should i use" wars myself,
>>    
>>
>More like a shared frustration that there aren't really any
>satisfactory editors out there, to offer today's MSWord users.
>No free tools, at least.  I've heard good things about XMetal, but I
>have never tried it.
>
I've used XMetaL for small DocBook projects over the past 2 or 3 years. 
It is (or was) totally adequate to the task and offered excellent 
flexibility in that there were text, tags and tags-off views of the 
edited content as well as a reasonable CSS-IE-driven preview window. In 
addition, until the new version 4 release, it was possible to adopt a 
very flexible approach to customization, from light, user-controlled 
changes in behaviour all the way over to complete gutting and rebuilding 
via forms and scripting. XMetaL was my "editor of choice" for XML and 
the occasional excursion into SGML (or even by extension HTML).

With version 4, Corel has changed the packaging and marketing approach 
by getting further into bed with the Windows platform. The packaging 
sees a partitioning of XMetaL into developer versions and a run-time 
version. The developer version requires MS Visual Studio. The run-time 
version no longer contains the forms-designer functionality of earlier 
versions; it's not clear what else has been removed because Corel is not 
responding to queries on its mailing list and the marketing info on the 
Corel site is vague, at least when last I looked. In addition, it's 
extremely inconvenient to evaluate the changes because, at last scan, 
only the developer version of the product was available for download and 
testing. One thing is clear, SGML is no longer a part of XMetaL's 
functionality.

My take on this is that Corel, in response to the $25M MS cash infusion 
of a year or so ago, changed its direction with this product by adopting 
the Visual Studio infrastructure. Perhaps I'm deluded, but it's not hard 
to imagine a scenario in which that decision being made, Microsoft's 
mission to neuter a potentially competing product was accomplished and 
they then started shopping their interest in Corel to the VC market. I 
think they sold it off a month or two ago.  I admit this is over 
simplified in that Corel has not been doing itself a lot of good on 
other fronts either. But I think there are shadows of truth there.

In any event, XMetaL has become a more difficult "buy" decision as a 
result of changes to version 4 because of the added weight of baggage it 
brings to the organization. The changes seem to leave the individual, 
small to medium business environment in the lurch. And the whole thing 
makes XML advocacy in markets other than the traditional technical 
publishing bastions very, very difficult indeed.

Too bad.

                                   ...edN