Alexandre said:
I have heard a lot of time that one day XML will replace XHTML for Web
page development; and that XHTML will not be used anymore.
Since XHTML is still widely used,do you think that these "sayings" are
true ?
The simple answer is "maybe".
First off, XHTML *is* an XML language -- unlike HTML, which was based on
SGML. And XHTML is indeed intended to be HTML's replacement, according
to the W3C. So you've already taken the first step.
Second, one of XHTML's advantages is that, as an XML language, it allows
part of the document to be written in other languages -- SVG, for
example - distinguished from the XHTML via namespaces. I do believe
we're going to see increasing amounts of this, since XHTML still has
most of the warts of HTML and extending into other languages will permit
more interesting things to be done. So XHTML, if it persists, may wind
up being not much more than a wrapper.
Third, if you take a look at the new generation of web development --
Ajax in particular -- you'll see that increasingly communication between
the browser and the server is being done in XML, with XHTML used
essentially as a rendering/interaction language rather than being the
basis of the website's design. Even when normal (X)HTML is being served
out, the servers are often based firmly on XML processing, and are just
using stylesheets to translate that into (X)HTML for interaction with
the user.
If yes, do you know a WYSIWYG web page editor than can generate XML +
XSL code instead of generating HTML + CSS code ?
You're crossing two semi-compatable concepts there. XSL is a lot richer
than HTML-plus-CSS. That richness means it can do things that the
HTML-plus-CSS version can't do without scripting. But for that very
reason, WYSIWYG is really not the right metaphor for editing it. (Think
about what happens if the stylesheet says "Don't show me the purchase
order if it's empty", and you empty it -- in a WYSIWYG system, how do
you then get it back? Similarly, imaging typing into a form which is
re-sorting itself as you're typing.) What's more commonly done is a
multi-window solution -- work on the source and the stylesheet, and have
the resulting rendering displayed in a separate window. For that, you
don't actually need a particularly fancy tool; push refresh on an
XSLT-aware browser to see what effect your changes have had.
Since I'm not a WYSIWYG fan generally, I don't have recommendations. I
know XMetaL, oXygen, and XMLSpy all said they were adding XSLT support
at one point (though recent posts here suggest XMLSpy's implementation
may have some bugs?), so you might want to start by checking their status.
