Re: Current trends in Authoring Tools?

["D. Michael McIntyre" <michael -dot- mcintyre -at- rosegardenmusic -dot- com>]

On Friday 09 February 2007 12:12 pm, ct wrote:
> I love XML...but it's not "all encompassing" or self-contained.  It's
> just a piece of the puzzle.  It would be nice if we could all agree on
> the box as well.

I agree.  I love XML too, but just what exactly *is* XML?  It all depends on 
your DTD, or you can even use XML as an application data format without going 
to the trouble to create a formal DTD at all (and I have.)

XML is anything and everything you want it to be, but it isn't a panacea.  
It's something that someone could use to build one.

I do hope that happens though.  One format, one standard, for all platforms, 
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all!  But that's a FOSS commune 
hippie talking.  The proprietary world always seems to find a way to wreck 
universal standards.

Like with how Microsoft is paying attention to ODF at the same time they 
(reportedly) advise their customers that saving in ODF might cut them off 
from key bits of formatting forever.

And ODF is not the kind of panacea I'm looking for either.  Have you tried to 
*read* any of that stuff? The content.xml file inside one of those has no 
carriage returns or whitespace, and it's effectively impossible to edit with 
a plain text editor:

[snip preceding 17,000 characters of this gibberish...]
onto 17. <text:s/>Store ahead on left about 1 mile.</text:p><text:p 
text:style-name="P2"/><text:p text:style-name="P4">Out from Fred&apos;s: 
<text:s/>17 S back to I-140 to I-40 to points 
west.</text:p></office:text></office:body></office:document-content>

I want a universal XML schema that everyone can agree on.  I want the option 
of editing it with WYSIWYG tools or a text editor, or both, as I see fit.  I 
want the results to look the same on the screen or on the page, on Linux, 
Windows, or Mac.

As far as I can tell, the nearest thing we have to being that universal right 
now is HTML, and HTML flunks the "results look the same" test bigtime.

Maybe I'm missing a train.  I'd love to see what station it's at, and go catch 
it.  Maybe I'm ranting about nothing.
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre 
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