I was working on developing element templates for my users and I was
struck by how it can be confusing to see a set of empty boxes in a newly
generated XML document or element. I thought that it might be useful to
allow configurations to specify template text for initially created new
elements.
When a user creates a new document or element, temporary text could be
placed within the elements (which allow textual children) indicating the
type of information that should go in that element; this temporary text
could receive a special CSS instruction so that it could be styled
differently to look temporary (such as perhaps greyed out), and it would
never be saved along with the document (or, alternatively, that could be
at user discretion). It could be implemented with an XXE configuration
element such as:
<cfg:elementTemplate name="date" selectable="override">
<date>
<cfg:templateContent>
Date of publication here (in YYYY-MM-DD format)
</cfg:templateContent>
</date>
</cfg:elementTemplate>
And then when the user creates a new date, it would be populated with
the text "Date of publication here (in YYYY-MM-DD format)" until the
user interacts with the text content (such as beginning to type), in
which case it would disappear. Certainly there are some implementation
issues, but I think this could be useful for making XML documents more
usable and understandable.
Thank you for your consideration,
John L. Clark
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