Which Editor?
Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2023 12:52 am
I used to be part of the DITA community and a happy user of OxygenXML. I certainly lack information on the progress of the OxygenXML family of tools over the last 5 years.
Situation: These days my customers work with a specific XML dialect named XDatenfelder which is used in the German public administration IT community to formalize data sets mostly for interaction between online sites and backend systems.
Situation (continued): In order to model a set of data for a specific interaction right now, a commercial tool that hides all the details related to XSD validity is used by 95% of all users. This tool moreover supports a rather specific type of versioning, of element reuse, and a large number of quality aspects to be found in accompanying documentation. Additionally there are visualization, import, export and other features.
Complication: This situation is aggravating as the technological landscape as well as the requirements are moving at a speed higher than what the tool manufacturer can accomplish. For example there is a new public source for XML building blocks that are XDatenfelder XSD compliant and can be searched/retrieved using a REST API. Integrating this API into the tool appears to be a steep challenge for the parties involved.
Solution: We feel there should ideally be an open source solution that allows for robust functionality out of the box while allowing for adaptions as need arises by all parties involved. Surely there must be thousands of languages based on XML schemas without the need for a schema specific editor for each of them.
What would a clever approach to employ a general purpose tool look like? OxygenXML is much too powerful and doesn't offer the simplicity required by our SMEs.
Questions and suggestions by the community are most welcome.
Situation: These days my customers work with a specific XML dialect named XDatenfelder which is used in the German public administration IT community to formalize data sets mostly for interaction between online sites and backend systems.
Situation (continued): In order to model a set of data for a specific interaction right now, a commercial tool that hides all the details related to XSD validity is used by 95% of all users. This tool moreover supports a rather specific type of versioning, of element reuse, and a large number of quality aspects to be found in accompanying documentation. Additionally there are visualization, import, export and other features.
Complication: This situation is aggravating as the technological landscape as well as the requirements are moving at a speed higher than what the tool manufacturer can accomplish. For example there is a new public source for XML building blocks that are XDatenfelder XSD compliant and can be searched/retrieved using a REST API. Integrating this API into the tool appears to be a steep challenge for the parties involved.
Solution: We feel there should ideally be an open source solution that allows for robust functionality out of the box while allowing for adaptions as need arises by all parties involved. Surely there must be thousands of languages based on XML schemas without the need for a schema specific editor for each of them.
What would a clever approach to employ a general purpose tool look like? OxygenXML is much too powerful and doesn't offer the simplicity required by our SMEs.
Questions and suggestions by the community are most welcome.