Re: What is GNOME office?

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Fri, Nov 17, 2000 at 06:52:58PM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> I agree with Dave - I don't think using a visual editor to write
> DocBook is a very good idea,

The choices seem to be (1) improve something like AbiWord to have good
recursive style support, and tie that to XML/SGML elements, moving
towards better XML support, (2) improve congolmerate (I don't think it
works any more, it depends on a library I couldn't find), (3) find
a commercial SGML editor and get it open sourced (unlikely but not
impossible, e.g. Interleaf/BroadVision doesn't seem to use Author/Editor),
or (4) start a new XML editor project.

I have a *lot* of experience with SGML and XML document creation, and
with tools to do it.

The best tool varies with the nature of the task; A/E (see 3 above) was
about the best on the market for writing, although EPIC (Adept Editor)
has now overtaken it I think.

None of them are "perfect", in that they are making what many think of
as a simple task (just write stuff) more complex (identify the components
of your document and relate them to someone else's ideas).

There _is_ an overlap between structured/semantic editing and word
processing, but it takes a lot of effort to make it work.

Lee

-- 
Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam holoweb net - http://www.holoweb.net/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
author, The Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley, August 2000
Co-author, The XML Specification Guide, Wiley, 1999