Mailing-List: contact cocoon-users-help@xml.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Message-ID: <000f01c02d37$ed96ad20$bd00a8c0@infoplanning.com>
From: "Berin Loritsch" <bloritsch@infoplanning.com>
To: <cocoon-users@xml.apache.org>,
	"Greg Gallagher" <ggallag@foc.com>
References: <20001002152116.D10662@foc.com>
Subject: Re: XML Editor w/ Cocoon
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 08:46:19 -0400
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg Gallagher" <ggallag@foc.com>
To: <cocoon-users@xml.apache.org>
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 4:21 PM
Subject: XML Editor w/ Cocoon


> Hello,
> 
>    I'm trying to come up with a web publishing solution for my
> company's intranet site using the least amount of resources.  Cocoon
> was pretty attractive in that it was OpenSource and pretty damn cool.
> I've installed it and been playing with it and basically I'm drooling
> over it.  However, most if not 99.999% of the users who will be
> inputing content/markup will not be able to deal with the markup
> directly.  They _need_ some sort of an XML editor which allows them to
> worry about structure and content first, and markup last.
>    I've been researching various companies and I'd like to use a pretty
> frontend for the users, such as Arbortext, to create the XML and to
> use Cocoon/Apache/Jakarta to do the publishing.  In other words,
> Cocoon meets with my publishing needs but doesn't really cover the
> editing/creation of the XML and I couldn't really feed it Arbortext
> XML without doing a lot of work on XSL's..

If your people creating the XML are running Windows, try Softquad's
XMetaL 2.0 offering.  I've evaluated it, and it makes generating the
XML according to any DTD quite easy.  It costs ~$500, but for business
analyst types or content types, it makes it almost as easy as editing
Word documents.  It uses CSS to style the page while you are editing
it, even though that is not the final solution you use.

I have yet to see another editor out there that is as easy to use.
Another product is Allaire's Homesite.  You still work with the text,
but it is still easier than emacs/vi to the average user.  I have
yet to see a quality open source solution for the same thing.  This
is unfortunate, as I support open source as much as possible in my
company.  I have successfully reimplemented the web site in Cocoon
(not live yet), and the desire is for our admin to administer the
text on the site.