Re: word processor document format: what parts?

[Mark Galassi <rosalia cygnus com>]

[Patrick's discussion of using xml as a basis for *all* word processor 
work, with xsl to do the rendering.]

I think Patrick is completely right, and a really cool processor must
work that way.

If you do that, you end up with a good part of a replacement for
FrameMaker+SGML which is a cool SGML authoring tool.  The missing part 
is the "structure view": a tree view of the structure of your document 
which makes it really great to work with highly structured SGML DTDs
like DocBook.

The ideal word processor for me would be one that:

* Stores docs internally as SGML or XML (with a particular DTD).

* Applies stylesheets to the marked up text on the fly, and displays
  it WYSIWYG.

* Has an easy-to-use DSL or DSSSL editor which can be used "on the
  fly" to set how given elements are rendered.

* Has a FrameMaker+SGML-style "structure view".

* Allows "overrides" so that certain paragraphs can be rendered a
  little differently from how the stylesheet would render them.

* Has full emacs-like extensibility :-)