Standardizing on XML? (Was: Re: Why WYSIWYG for XML???)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Bruce Byfield, quoting Chris Despopoulos ("I would like to see XML as 
the format for a significant portion of all the text that is now 
created"), wondered: <<Would you mind holding forth on your reasons?>>

I won't speak for Chris, but I see this as both wonderful idea and a 
complete disaster. The wonderful part: Any GML, including XML, can 
constrain how badly users can mangle the text. A well-implemented XML 
structure*, with a user-friendly interface, would prevent users from 
committing some of the formatting atrocities they routinely commit and 
actually help them write better or at least force them to learn to use 
styles properly. As a freelance editor, this would eliminate hours of 
reformatting some weeks.

* Do you trust Microsoft to do this right in fewer than 3 tries? I work 
mostly in Word to cope with client files, and I sure don't trust 'em.

<<What do you think the rewards of switching are to the average 
writer?>>

That's the "complete disaster" part. The average writer (office 
workers, research scientists, engineers, etc. rather than technical 
writers) can't use even the simple style features that already exist. 
If constrained by a DTD or even by simple format validation, most would 
come up with even more horrific things to do with styles* than they 
already do rather than trying to learn the new features.

* Such as applying whatever style tag the DTD suggests (i.e., the tag 
permitted by the DTD at a given position) rather than thinking about 
the semantics long enough to select the correct tag. For example, you'd 
be amazed at how many bulleted lists I see that are created by manually 
typing bullet characters and tabs rather than selecting the bullet 
style from the template.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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