Need an XML editor comparable to Visual Studio 2005

R

Robert Dailey

Hi,

I've gone through tons of XML editors:

- XML Spy
- Oxygen
- UltraEdit
- PSPad
- Many others I can't think of...

They have all failed to impress me. So far, Visual Studio 2005 is the
best XML editor. It has the perfect XML code completion (In other
words, it completes closing angle brackets in a unique way, etc). Most
of the larger editors like XML Spy and Oxygen are really slow. The
other ones are fancy "Notepad" programs that really don't offer any
code completion or other nice features.

I don't really care about XML validation using DTD's or schemas, nor
do I care about special tree views for XML or anything else advanced.
I just care about ease of typing XML code. I want the same nice XML
completion features that Visual Studio 2005 offers.

With the SP1 patch released for Visual Studio 2005, the XML completion
broke terribly. Typing <ElementName> and pressing ENTER puts the </
ElementName> on the wrong tab. It's just totally messed up.

Here's what I want in an editor:
- Lightweight. Nothing overly bloated, something that has at the very
most (if possible) the features I want and nothing more. Since I
probably can't have that, something responsive would be ideal. Nothing
coded in JAVA please; JAVA is slow as dirt.
- Configurable syntax highlighting. I want to be able to specify
colors for attribute values, names, operators, elements, text, etc.
- Configurable code completion. Type XML for a bit using Visual Studio
2005 (before SP1) and you'll see what I mean. Code completion is my
biggest concern.
- Must target Windows XP. I want something easy to install.

If anyone can suggest something like this, please do so. I would
greatly appreciate it.
 
J

Joseph Kesselman

It's somewhat terrifying to consider this, but by today's standards
Emacs is a lightweight editor as far as code size is concerned, despite
being highly featureful/configurable...
Typing <ElementName> and pressing ENTER puts the </ElementName> on
the wrong tab. It's just totally messed up.

Uhm... For proper XML editing you should NOT be seeing *ANY*
auto-indentation, since the whitespace is meaningful in many XML
documents. The exception would be a pure-structure editor (where the
indentation is only on screen, not actually present in the data model or
file), or possibly one which is aware of the DTD/Schema (and thus knows
what elements have only "element content" -- though assuming
whitespace-in-element-content will be ignored is NOT actually a good
bet; depending on what you're doing it may actually make a difference).

This is why indentation is not the default mode for XSLT's output -- it
is ***MUCH*** safer to avoid doing anything to the user's data that
hasn't been explicitly requested.
 
M

Manuel Collado

Robert Dailey escribió:
Hi,

I've gone through tons of XML editors:

- XML Spy
- Oxygen
- UltraEdit
- PSPad
- Many others I can't think of...

They have all failed to impress me. So far, Visual Studio 2005 is the
best XML editor. It has the perfect XML code completion (In other
words, it completes closing angle brackets in a unique way, etc). Most
of the larger editors like XML Spy and Oxygen are really slow. The
other ones are fancy "Notepad" programs that really don't offer any
code completion or other nice features.

Have you tried XXE? It is not a 'XML editor', but a near WYSIWYG
structure editor:

http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/
I don't really care about XML validation using DTD's or schemas, nor
do I care about special tree views for XML or anything else advanced.
I just care about ease of typing XML code. I want the same nice XML
completion features that Visual Studio 2005 offers.

XML documents are not just text. They are a hierarchical data structure.
Please explain why do you insist in editing just the cumbersome text
representation of the data structure, instead of directly editing the
structure itself.
With the SP1 patch released for Visual Studio 2005, the XML completion
broke terribly. Typing <ElementName> and pressing ENTER puts the </
ElementName> on the wrong tab. It's just totally messed up.

Here's what I want in an editor:
- Lightweight. Nothing overly bloated, something that has at the very
most (if possible) the features I want and nothing more. Since I
probably can't have that, something responsive would be ideal. Nothing
coded in JAVA please; JAVA is slow as dirt.

Well, XXE is a Java application. It is really slow to start, but
operates fast while editing.
- Configurable syntax highlighting. I want to be able to specify
colors for attribute values, names, operators, elements, text, etc.

XXE has no 'syntax highlighting'. Instead, it operates on a CSS
rendering of the document contents.
- Configurable code completion. Type XML for a bit using Visual Studio
2005 (before SP1) and you'll see what I mean. Code completion is my
biggest concern.

XXE is a validating editor. You select an action (insert, replace,
convert, wrap, ...) and a side window shows a list of valid tags at the
given point. Just type the first character(s) of the tagname to select
the desired one.
- Must target Windows XP. I want something easy to install.

XP supports Java applications. To install XXE, just unzip the
distribution archive in a folder of your choice.
If anyone can suggest something like this, please do so. I would
greatly appreciate it.

Not sure if this is what you want, but I find XXE quite useful for
editing the content of XML documents. It provides ready to use styles
for common document formats (Docbook, XHTML, ...). A simple CSS style
sheet is enough for custom XML markup. Elaborated extended CSS
stylesheets can be created to be really productive for editing specific
markups.

Hope this helps.
 
R

Robert Dailey

Robert Dailey escribió:







Have you tried XXE? It is not a 'XML editor', but a near WYSIWYG
structure editor:

http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/




XML documents are not just text. They are a hierarchical data structure.
Please explain why do you insist in editing just the cumbersome text
representation of the data structure, instead of directly editing the
structure itself.





Well, XXE is a Java application. It is really slow to start, but
operates fast while editing.


XXE has no 'syntax highlighting'. Instead, it operates on a CSS
rendering of the document contents.


XXE is a validating editor. You select an action (insert, replace,
convert, wrap, ...) and a side window shows a list of valid tags at the
given point. Just type the first character(s) of the tagname to select
the desired one.


XP supports Java applications. To install XXE, just unzip the
distribution archive in a folder of your choice.




Not sure if this is what you want, but I find XXE quite useful for
editing the content of XML documents. It provides ready to use styles
for common document formats (Docbook, XHTML, ...). A simple CSS style
sheet is enough for custom XML markup. Elaborated extended CSS
stylesheets can be created to be really productive for editing specific
markups.

Hope this helps.

Well I should elaborate a bit on my uses for XML, since it appears I
am confusing people.

I am, by no means, using XML normally. I'm using it as a "scripting
language" for my game. It doesn't just represent data- it performs
actions. Think of it as a cheesy replacement for LUA script (however
much more performance friendly). I type my XML from scratch, I don't
use any tree-based editors that allow you the ease of just typing in
values. I depend on being able to control the white-space and
formatting of my document so it's easily readable to a human, NOT to a
compiler or interpreter. I have my own custom XML parsing tools that I
use to convert the XML data to binary data for my game.

I hope this clears some of the confusion. Again, the way I'm using XML
here isn't standard or normal by any means. This XML was never
intended to be "standard" or portable by any means.

As you can see, having very nice code completion and auto indentation
features is very helpful since I'm typing the XML and I want it to be
readable.
 
J

Joe Kesselman

Robert said:
values. I depend on being able to control the white-space and
formatting of my document so it's easily readable to a human, NOT to a
compiler or interpreter. I have my own custom XML parsing tools that I
use to convert the XML data to binary data for my game.

Uhm... If you're not using XML as a structured markup, and not taking
advantage of the tools already available for processing XML
(off-the-shelf parsers and so on), may I suggest that there's little
advantage to using XML in the first place? It sound like your
application could be CSV, or parameter file, or something else much
simpler. However...
As you can see, having very nice code completion and auto indentation
features is very helpful since I'm typing the XML and I want it to be
readable.

OK, so you do want indentation and you're counting on the fact that your
application will know to ignore that whitespace. Fine; some XML
languages do commonly adopt that practice. (XSLT stylesheets are one
example, though the user has to understand that the moment they enter
literal text this assumption falls apart.)

As I said, I tend to use Emacs when hand-editing XML... but then, I use
Emacs when hand-editing almost anything. For a brief overview, see
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-emacs/
(There are actually several XML modes available to be loaded into Emacs;
I haven't tried xmlhack yet.)

Eclipse also has an XML editor built into it. For a brief overview, see
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-ecxml/
(Again, there are actually several XML tools available for Eclipse; the
article mentions the basic mode, XMLBuddy, Transclipse and Eclipse
Tidy.) On the other hand, Eclipse is one of those packages which makes
Emacs look small. On the other other hand, Eclipse runs rings around the
Visual stuff when it comes to Java development; Eclipse is, in fact, the
only IDE I have ever actually _liked_, because it's the only one which
provides good tools and integrates them well AND plays well with others.

I'm sure there's other stand-alone stuff, but I haven't had reason to go
looking for it. Websearch on "xml editor" and look for reviews?
 
P

Peter Flynn

Robert said:
Hi,

I've gone through tons of XML editors:

- XML Spy
- Oxygen
- UltraEdit
- PSPad
- Many others I can't think of...

They have all failed to impress me. So far, Visual Studio 2005 is the
best XML editor. It has the perfect XML code completion (In other
words, it completes closing angle brackets in a unique way, etc). Most
of the larger editors like XML Spy and Oxygen are really slow. The
other ones are fancy "Notepad" programs that really don't offer any
code completion or other nice features.

I don't really care about XML validation using DTD's or schemas, nor
do I care about special tree views for XML or anything else advanced.
I just care about ease of typing XML code. I want the same nice XML
completion features that Visual Studio 2005 offers.

Any decent XML editor will insert the whole element for you anyway.
Relying on completion for partial end-tags is a sucky and insecure way
to edit.

Try Emacs with psgml-mode and xxml-mode.

///Peter
 
J

JussiJ

Here's what I want in an editor:

You could try the Zeus editor:

http://www.zeusedit.com
- Lightweight. Nothing overly bloated

Being highly configurable Zeus could be called bloated, but
it still run very fast.

Startup time is less than a second and the file load times
are short.
- Configurable syntax highlighting.

It has configurable syntax highlighting.

Not sure how well it does XML coloring, but if you find a
problem you can always raise a bug report.
- Configurable code completion. Type XML for a bit
using Visual Studio 2005 (before SP1) and you'll see
what I mean. Code completion is my biggest concern.

Zeus has a fully configurable template based code
completion system.

What this measn for example is that in c/c++ file if
you type this:

foi<space>

Zeus will give you this:

for (int i = 0; i < ; ++i)
{
}

This may or may not be what you are after?

Alternatively Zeus is fully scriptable so if should also
be possible to write a script to implement some form
of script based code completion.
- Must target Windows XP. I want something easy to install.

Windows based, with install/uninstall.

Jussi Jumppanen
Author: Zeus for Windows IDE
 
S

Slonik

With the SP1 patch released forVisualStudio2005, theXMLcompletion
broke terribly. Typing <ElementName> and pressing ENTER puts the </
ElementName> on the wrong tab. It's just totally messed up.

If your "only" problem is screwed XML editor in VS2005 SP1 then I've
found a cure for this pain. After geting almost mad I've got in idea
and it seems it works. Just use XML editor from non patched
installation. Find somewhere installation of VS2005 without SP1 and
just copy this file to your installation:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\Xml
\Microsoft.XmlEditor.dll"
I did it and problems with silly indentation are solved.

Hope it helps.
Pavel
 

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