[metadataLibrarians] selecting an XML editor

[Muriel Foulonneau]

Hi Amanda,

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is going through the same
process to select an XML editor for both IT and end-users. Apparently, the
choice is going towards oxygen. Here is the analysis which had been made to
date.

Hope that is useful.

A. Preferred Option

Oxygen 4.0 (April 30 2004) (http://www.oxygenxml.com/)

-inexpensive (10-49 copies are $57.60 each)
-validation/well-formedness checking
-multiplatform (Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix)
-syntax colouring
-Unicode support (but differing opinions: some say no problem, some say
buggy, especially under Linux since its unclear where it gets its fonts
from, hence how to select)
-XSLT-to-HTML output appears nicely in bottom frame of screen in text format
-very responsive technical staff
-considered very accessible, can readily be used by those who have little
experience with XML; not as challenging as, for instance, Emacs
-allows conversion of TEI document to PDF (using TEI-Lite DTD, TEI XSL-FO
stylesheets and Apaches FOP, all integrated in Oxygen)


B. Other Options (Open Source) 

jEdit (http://www.jedit.org/ 
-open source
-in use for workshops--therefore accessible for novices
-written in Java, so it runs on MacOS X, OS/2, Unix, VMS and Windows. 
-supports (in theory) a large number of character encodings including UTF8
and Unicode
-however, found to be buggy by some 

Emacs (http://www.tei-c.org/Software/tei-emacs/) 
-open source
-well established, at least in the sciences since the mid 80s...
-wonderful and amazing once you get inside of it, but:
-many humanities folk don't see the power of emacs because they don't think
about manipulating text at the level of abstraction which has shaped the
evolution of emacs (sic)
-needs a better GUI
-very challenging to novices
-arcane, odd interface
-idiosyncratic keystroke combinations


C. Other Options (Commercial) 

epcEdit (http://www.epcedit.com/) 
-available for Windows, Linux, and Solaris
-large document support 
-complex DTDs 
-support for different language encodings (including CJK) 
-integrated HTML and CALS table editor 
-various view modes 
-full document validation 
-built-in PDF export 
-well reviewed and in use by several experts, but
-no multiple license
-twice as expensive as Oxygen (though still not costly) 

XmetaL 4 (http://www.sq.com) 
-sophisticated
-can switch to different views of the document
-good support for Unicode (in Xmetal3), but:
-still limited to Windows only
-somewhat expensive
-somewhat challenging to novices
-XMetal 3 moved towards trying to be a programming
environment for people that happen to use XML (it includes a
large programming manual in the box and no user manual, and has
a reworked UI reminiscent of Visual C++). 

XMLSpy (http://www.altova.com/products_ide.html) 
-user-friendly
-no longer limited to Windows: serves Linux and Mac
-web services support
-programming language support
-new advanced text view functionality
-extended database support for Sybase, MySQL, and IBM DB2, but:
-much more expensive than Oxygen (when licensed beyond individual use)

Muriel Foulonneau
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Phone: (1) 217-244-7809
Email: mfoulonn at uiuc.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: metadatalibrarians-monarchos.com-bounces at lists.monarchos.com
[mailto:metadatalibrarians-monarchos.com-bounces at lists.monarchos.com] On
Behalf Of Kevin S. Clarke
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 11:14 AM
To: metadatalibrarians-monarchos.com at lists.monarchos.com
Subject: Re: [metadataLibrarians] selecting an XML editor

Hi,

oXygen is a very good editor that can be used as a standalone product
for most of the people or integrated into Eclipse IDE for your
programmer and IT people.  It is also very reasonably priced
considering its features.

The editor I use, XMLBuddy, is also very good, but it only exists, I
believe, as a plugin to the Eclipse environment.  This isn't
necessarily a bad thing, but you might need to investigate whether the
environment would offer more than you want (causing confusion and more
time to learn the interface just to use a smaller set of features) for
the non-programmer types. http://www.xmlbuddy.com/

We started using XMLSpy here and had problems with it when working
with larger XML documents.  That was awhile back (so it might be fixed
by now), but with the newer editors we have had no reason to go back
to it.

A good place to look for other editors is:
http://www.xmlsoftware.com/editors.html  -- They range in quality and
price.

Happy hunting, Kevin


On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:22:36 -0400, Amanda J. Wilson
<wilson.1596 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Good afternoon all --
> 
> We are looking at investing in XML editors here at OSU and I have been
> given the glorious task of research!  So far I have poked around and found
> some information about oXygen, XML Spy, and XMetaL.
> 
> To give you some background, some of the people using the editor would be
> new to XML and would get basic training in XML.  Our EAD guru and myself
> will also me using the editor and the jury's still out on our programmer
> and IT people.
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions about additional editors I should
> investigate?  Also, are any product reviews available that you know of?
> 
> Someone has already mentioned looking at XForms and InfoPath for simple
> data entry and I've got two votes for oXygen (good for the average markup
> person).
> 
> Any and all assistance is greatly appreciated!
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Amanda
> 
> **-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**
> Amanda Wilson
> Metadata Librarian
> The Ohio State University Libraries
> 1858 Neil Avenue Mall, 040N
> Columbus, OH 43210
> wilson.1596 at osu.edu
> (614)292-6314
> (614)292-2015 fax
> **-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**-**
> 
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