Re: [xsl] browsers with XSL capabilities

Subject: Re: [xsl] browsers with XSL capabilities
From: Robert Koberg <rob@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 17:23:49 -0800
For an editor's application requiring something as pervasive as a MS browser
does not seem to be hard to swallow.

I have been working with open source products (xalan, xerces) for display
and with Interwoven as the content management/entry tool and it sucks!
Perhaps it is that our implementors cannot create a usable gui (totally
possible) but I have not seen any user friendly systems for entering content
(and I have looked) that will end up as XML. It is a major failing. Sure you
'Keep it Simple' for the costly developer (maybe not so costly anymore?)
that way but the non-technical editor does not see it as simple.

Standards are great and I am all for them unless they can't do what I need
them to do.

I would love an open source alternative. Perhaps Netscape 8 (probably their
next release) will have something close. And perhaps they can get Netscape
to display itself before I can go to the bathroom and come back.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Garfield" <lgarfiel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [xsl] browsers with XSL capabilities


> I'd actually recommend against such things, as those attributes and
features are
> IE 5.5 ONLY.  If they were part of the W3C's spec, fine, I'd accept
someone
> saying "non-conformant browsers can bugger off."  But I would advise
against
> MS-only extensions in every and all cases.  (Unless I'm way off the mark
and
> contentEditable is in some W3C spec I haven't read yet, in which case I'll
go
> back to my cave and shut up.)
>
> Evan Lenz wrote:
>
> > Robert Koberg wrote:
> > > There are some really cool things you can do with IE5.5 - it is a
great
> > > browser! Editable DIVs and SPANs, etc, control over right click
(context
> > > sensitive) menus and so much more.
> >
> > I agree. The contentEditable attribute is quite powerful.
> >
> > > It would seem that if a good (javascript) developer could come up
> > > with a way
> > > to "roundtrip" (back to XML) these editable DIVs and SPANs you
> > > could have a
> > > really cool browser based XML editing system... :)
> >
> > That would be cool. Until then, you can do server-side XML construction
> > based on what the user submits and still get many of the same benefits.
If
> > you allow them to edit full HTML, which is certainly supported, but only
> > scoped to a certain part of the page, then you could store that HTML as
text
> > content (rather than markup, because its not well-formed) within XML.
This
> > goes against the basic idea of the separation of presentation and
content,
> > but not if you consider user-customized presentation as part of the
content.
> > For example, you could allow them to edit full WYSIWYG HTML but only
scoped
> > to a certain element on the page. The "real" presentation (generated
from
> > XSLT on either the server or the client), including things like navbars
and
> > footers, is read-only with respect to what the user is able to edit.
> >
> > Unfortunately, since the HTML produced by the browser-based editing is
not
> > well-formed, you can't do much with that content when you want to
display
> > the edited page again unless you use XSLT's disable-output-escaping.
Tough
> > luck if you try this with Cocoon. MSXML3 handles it fine though.
> >
> > For a small demo, I've put up a temporary page on my website, so you can
get
> > an idea of what I'm talking about. The server would take the posted data
(in
> > this case only one field containing HTML-encoded text) and
include/replace
> > it in the XML source file. The demo requires IE 5.5 but not MSXML.
> >
> > http://xmlportfolio.com/temp/contentEditable.html
> >
> > This is a remnant from a past prototype project, so please excuse the
messy
> > source code.
> >
> > Evan Lenz
> > XYZFind Corp.
> >
> >  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
>
> --
> Larry Garfield
> lgarfiel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Do you have a PalmOS Organizer?  Click here to add me to your address
book:
> http://signature.coola.com/?lgarfiel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> -- "If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you." :-)
>
>
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
>


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