xml custom interface program?

[smokeyd]

i am trying to find an easy way for non technical people to edit an xml
file. ideally this would mean that i could create a really simple
interface with fields for users to complete which would then ammend an
xml file. for example if this was a telephone message it would be
something like:

enter name [name textbox]
enter tel number [tel number]
enter message [phone message]
[submit]

does anyone know of any software that would make this possible?
ideally this would be free for use on mac and pc.. your help is much
appreciated.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=FCrgen_Kahrs?=]

i am trying to find an easy way for non technical people to edit an xml
file. ideally this would mean that i could create a really simple
interface with fields for users to complete which would then ammend an

This question has come up here some months ago.
At that time, nobody knew a tool. The problem
can be re-stated as a compiler construction
problem.

INPUT: DTD or a Schema or an example XML file
OUTPUT: Source code of a GUI application

The GUI application is expected to support the
user in creating a valid file. Hints about correct
usage should be given.

 

[Peter Flynn]

i am trying to find an easy way for non technical people to edit an xml
file.

For normal text documents this doesn't exist. All the editors require
far too much foreknowledge of XML. See my paper at Extreme Markup this
summer which goes into this in detail (http://epu.ucc.ie/articles/extreme06)

ideally this would mean that i could create a really simple
interface with fields for users to complete which would then ammend an
xml file.

Have a look at Microsoft's InfoPath.

does anyone know of any software that would make this possible?
ideally this would be free for use on mac and pc..

XForms will eventually help here. But it's early days.

///Peter

 

[Peter Flynn]

This question has come up here some months ago.
At that time, nobody knew a tool. The problem
can be re-stated as a compiler construction
problem.

INPUT: DTD or a Schema or an example XML file
OUTPUT: Source code of a GUI application

The GUI application is expected to support the
user in creating a valid file. Hints about correct
usage should be given.

One of the problems is that there is no accepted standard for expressing
the necessary hints. Various manufacturers have tried various methods at
various times from the beginning of SGML to the present day, but no-one
has yet hit on an acceptable method.

In any case, for "data" XML the problem is just one of screen-painting:
all the other tools exist, and something like Tcl/Tk's "pack" algorithm
should be useful. For "document" XML the field is still wide open.

///Peter

 

[Joe Kesselman]

There have been tools that have tried to read a schema and generate a
set of interactions for creating documents that conform to that schema,
but those can't keep track of constraints that aren't expressed directly
in the schema (and, realistically, there always are some), nor do they
know enough about the intent of the data to provide useful prompting.
Some folks have tried to solve this by annotating schemas with
additional information to drive these tools, but generally it hasn't
been very successful. At best, you get an interaction which is suitable
for someone who already understands the XML.

The more common solution is to throw together a really simple program
that gathers the data and then generates XML output. Or to use an
existing program, and then export or convert its output into the XML
representation. Some things really are easier to do than to automate.

 

[Manuel Collado]

Peter Flynn escribió:

Have a look at Microsoft's InfoPath.

Or Altova's Authentic/StyleVision.

Regards.

 

[Guest]

Or Altova's Authentic/StyleVision.

Can you recommend any of these ?
Can someone who is really only a user work with it ?