wrote:
>> Hello everybody,
>>
>> I'm looking for an XML based tool with some specific features. Let me
>> give you
>> a quick background before shooting the question...
>>
>> Who am I: a company offering services and tools for data entry.
>>
>> My clients: people who need to enter data into a system, and then send
>> me
>> the data in XML format. The data is mostly mixed-content, like short
>> papers,
>> and formetted text. But these sub-chunks are all organized in a
>> tree-like
>> structure.
>>
>> My problem: provide my clients with a *simple* tool that let them
>> enter the
>> data into the system. They must be able to enter formatted text
>> (normal, bold, etc.) and navigate through the tree structure.
>>
>> Question: is there a developer tool that allows me to build such
>> interfaces with relatively little effort?
>>
>> So far, I'm used to tools like FileMaker (or MS Access...). You can
>> easily build forms and formats, and adding a field or a button is a
>> matter of a mouse click.
>> Unfortunately they are based on classical database concepts, and data
>> must be structured in tables... This way I have to implement joins and
>> spend a lot of time in chaining different tables. XML is the way to
>> go, but I couldn't find any tool with the same usability so far.
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Stefano
>
>
> As far as I know, nothing like this exists. Whoever writes it will have
> a killer app. I think I may try to write it, but it would be Mac-first,
> because I am not familar with the Windows application creation kits.
It sounds as if what you want is a normal XML document editor (ie one that
will handle mixed content) rather than a data editor, which assumes the
input is in rectangular tables. There are dozens of these, and some of
them allow you to customise the interface so that you can remove the bits
you don't want your users to be exposed to, and leave the text-entry pane
for the mixed content and the hierarchical pane for navigation. But it
does need to be one of the programmable ones, eg EPIC, XMetaL, epcEdit,
etc, rather than one where the interface is immutable.
///Peter
--
XML FAQ:
http://xml.silmaril.ie/
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