Hi Mark,
Sorry for the slow reply :(
> What are the options in terms of building standards support
> into CMS type products?
>
> Many CMS products tout themselves as being XHTML compliant -
> yadda, yadda. But how does this play out in the real world.
> From where I stand I can see a bunch of options in
> implementing this type of support:
Frankly Mark, I'm yet to find a product (that doesn't require a degree to
install and run) that does this properly. I always build exactly what is
required for the job in a way that it is very simple for my customer to
operate.
You end up with a CMS that is both cost-effective (in that it generally costs
the client between AU$2,500 and AU$10,000 depending on the complexity they
require) and does the job perfectly to the brief.
I have a base set of code (and database structure) that is modified to suite
and then the required add-ons are built around this (modules bolted on or
disabled).
The WSG site (while it could be a lot better as it was basically built in one
evening) is a good example of this though it has features that other sites
don't require (like html code displaying on the page by default).
I have been playing with Movable Type quite a bit lately and I must say it is
very similar to the systems I build in how the output code is applied (the
template, though I don't allow the user to edit the template like they do).
However, any mark-up like bolding or hyperlinks puts the html tag into the
content visibly to the user. I know some of my clients would be completely
freaked by this so if rich editing is required, I'd prefer to use an HTML
editor for it. But, MT is free (as is FarCry I know... but as far as I have
seen, FarCry is Spectra like in it's complexity in trying to cover all
expectations, making it too difficult for the general "yard-ape" customer).
> 1) In the editor, only let users create content in the editor
> that is compliant. What sort of support is there for this
> kind of thing among the currently available editors? How do
> you give the user sufficient control over presentation while
> maintaining control of the code & not constantly stuffing
> XHTML compliance down the user's throat?
I guess the question that I keep asking is how to store the data... and I
think this is part of your question as it involves how the mark-up is applied.
1. Plain text,
2. fully marked up (hopefully correct semantically),
3. plain text with "monikas" or flags for simple mark-up
(e.g. surrounding something with {} is converted to <strong></strong> on
output)
4. XML
Option 1 is easy, simply replace the line breaks with <br /> and then double
<br />s with </p><p> as well as escaping ampersands, curly quotes etc. and
you're pretty well done (all this done on output). This makes the content
re-usable for metadata, summaries etc. They can't go wrong. But this doesn't
allow for lists, bold, italics or headings.
For option 2, I swear by Ektron's eWebEditPro (and the +XML version) as it
does produce pretty good code. It has a lot of JavaScript in the background
that is open and configurable. Once you get one that is working for you, use
these settings as your default for new implementations.
Option 3 is a bit iffy, and depends on how you read the customer and their
ability to comprehend "mark-up". The monikas can be replaced for output to the
page and removed for output to metadata etc. but it remains a bit messy.
Option 4 is very interesting but I haven't attempted it yet. It's possible to
use a visual editor for the data input (eWebEditPro+XML) or just a combination
of text inputs and text areas for sections of content for each page that can
be added to. E.g. A heading and a few pars, then another heading and a few
pars, as many sets as you need.
My mate woric in Melbourne (a wsg member but not on the CMS list) is building
an open source ASP.NET plain XML/XSLT CMS. A set of ISAPI filters as I
understand it (and I really don't yet). The pages on the server are raw XML
(with a defined file extension like .cp for content page with a text/html
mime-type sent in the header) and the output to the browser is whatever you
want it to be (HTML 4.01 or XHTML etc.).
I believe he is currently building a LINUX version of the engine behind it.
This is a very attractive solution and I await eagerly his public announcement
of the program. I will ensure that this list is made aware of it.
P
*********************************************************
The CMS discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
*********************************************************
