Re: What is GNOME office?

[Daniel Veillard <Daniel Veillard w3 org>]

On Fri, Nov 17, 2000 at 08:02:36PM -0500, Liam Quin wrote:
> 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.

  (5) Finish the Thot toolkit/editor (which is the Amaya foundation and
      used to be the core of the commercial Grif SGML editor) port to Gtk
      and make it export XML ... not a task for the faint of heart, but
      still probably more cost effective than turning a non-structured
      editor into a structured one
      
Thot was good enough for French submarines documentation, should be okay
for Gnome's one ... Also there is no legal barrier, the main one is getting
people accustomed to the code to do it :-(

    http://www.inrialpes.fr/opera/Thot.en.html
 code is within Amaya releases
    http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

> 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.

  Completely agree. Structured editors also tend to drive WP users crazy
for 3 weeks before they start thinking in a structured way, it takes a lot
of efforts here too :-)

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard w3 org | W3C, INRIA Rhone-Alpes  | libxml Gnome XML toolkit
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