OK, now I know that elementTemplates are not designed to be available in lenient mode. So... why not?
I tend to agree that stepping through a bunch of required-element prompts just trying to open a template is annoying. So, I'll suggest again (for the last time, I promise ;-) that enabling elementTemplates in lenient mode could provide a user the quickest/easiest way out of lenient mode. Is it difficult or impossible for you to enable this behavior? Or do you just *hate* the idea because it violates some time-honored principle of "heavy-duty XML users"? ;-) I understand that you've been delivering your product with certain features/behaviors for quite a while now, and that the way product works is the way *you* prefer it to work. But I think you could be a little more flexible when considering alternatives. Because you'll soon be supporting DITA, I think you have an opportunity to attract a lot of customers who are currently assuming that Arbortext, XMetal, and Serna are their only (very expensive) alternatives. And although *you* may hate the way those other products handle things like required elements and "leniency", lots of these customers don't. XXE seems to pride itself on configurability (justifiably so). Perhaps some of these alternate features/behaviors could be offered as options (much the same as MSWord offers options for WordPerfect users)? Just my $0.02. (Sorry, don't have any Euros on me ;-) -----Original Message----- From: Hussein Shafie [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 12:30 AM To: Mark Fletcher Cc: xmleditor-support at xmlmind.com Subject: Re: [XXE] RE: ditabase.dtd bug Mark Fletcher wrote: > Well, personally, I think it's silly to give users a ditabase template > with a generic topic inserted and make them convert the tag to > something else. Well, in this case, we, at XMLmind, are silly because this approach is systematically used in XXE, not only for document templates but also for newly inserted elements. > To my mind, it's much better delivering empty dita tags and letting > the user insert the element they want--assuming that inserting that > element will turn off lenient mode. But you STILL didn't answer my > question :-) Are elementTemplates supposed to be available when in > lenient mode or not? Again, if they were available, it would solve the > problem of the first inserted child coming in invalid. The answer is obviously: *no* elementTemplates are not supposed to be available in lenient mode. You have found yourself that they are not available in lenient mode. This means that, unless you found a *bug* (in which case, I would have thanked you for finding it), elementTemplates are *not* supposed to be available in lenient mode. > Of course, the best solution to this problem (possibly avoiding the > need for lenient mode altogether) would be to prompt the user when > there is a choice of required elements. A number of other editors > have this feature. This is exactly what we have chosen *not* to do because we *hate* this behavior. The rationale of our design is obvious: - Most of the time, the simplest choice is the right choice (plus elementTemplates may override this automatic choice). - Replacing the wrong automatic choice is as tedious for the user than being prompted each time a choice is to be made. --> XMLmind XML Editor is designed as follows: if we, XMLmind people as heavy-duty XML Editor users, like to use our own product, *may* *be* other will like it too. --> XMLmind XML Editor is not designed as follows: other editors have such and such feature and therefore our product must have it too.
