Re: xlxp-dev: XSL and editing tools

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:35 AM 4/22/99 -0500, Paul Prescod wrote:
>I don't think that it addresses the
>point of the post, however. Links are not the problem. Editing a
>transformed view of a document is the problem. It isn't at all clear how
>edits in the view are translated back into edits in the source document.
>Suppose I add an element to a sorted list -- in the sorted view. Where in
>the unsorted source document does that element appear? Suppose I add an
>element at the point where a some element has been suppressed. Does the
>new element go before or after the suppressed element? etc.

When styles are simply annotation to markup structures, it's not that hard
to build editors that support such annotation.  If, however, markup
structures are just a holding tank for information that's going to be
transformed into something for presentation later, it's very difficult to
present those transformations to the user intelligently without constantly
flipping back and forth between source and (non-editable) presentation.

I think what Paul is proposing is something of a halfway-house, so that
users can have some idea of what their content will end up looking like,
but still use the power available in transformations.  It's a difficult
proposal to make work, but I think it'd be worth considering for a large
number of project types.

Simon St.Laurent
XML: A Primer
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http://www.simonstl.com


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