On 21/10/05, Ryan Germann <ryan@...> wrote:
>
> ...authors become doubly frustrated if, once they understand what an
> "element"
> is, what an "attribute" is, and what "nesting" means, they're left to
> figure out on their own the arbitrary content model of some DTD,
> without sufficient training or a sufficiently helpful / guided UI.

One of the reasons I am so late replying to this is that I was just on the
project from hell (I was brought in late in the project - too late to be
really effective) and I'm only just catching up.
Among a whole lot of other project problems, there were problems with
editing the content because the content model had been done by a tech head
who chucked it into XMetal and then just left the authors to get on with it.
The DTD was sketchily documented (too high level and not kept up to date),
there was a "template" which was an example document that everyone just
followed. There was next to no customisation of XMetal so UI guidance was
absolutely minimal.
Although I didn't get much of a chance to fix things (we did get over the
line, but only just), I did make some recommendations that hopefully might
make a difference in the future (if only they would throw money at me, then
I could really fix things:)).
The authors in this case where all tech happy types who would have been
capable of using Notepad as their XML editor so it wasn't the tool as such
that caused problems, it was the lack of knowledge about the content model.
That said, I do think most XML editing tools are pretty awful (and if you
don't spend the time to make them useful for your content model, they are
even more awful - but that's a problem for the implementer) - they just
about work when you're editing existing content but almost all of them are
really annoying when doing content creation.
-Melanie


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