Alex Milowski wrote: > I've run into a problem that is somewhat annoying and is probably a > common occurrence > for most users. I changed my schema slightly so that one of the > elements in my > existing documents would be invalid. I opened the document in the > editor and, of course, > it identified those elements as invalid. What it didn't do is give me > the correct > choices for which elements to insert. > > For example, suppose I had an address element type which was very > flexible and now > I've constrained the type to enforce at least a city and state. So, if > I had the > content > > <address><city>Berkeley</city></address> > > I now want the option when I select the city element to give me the > valid sibling > choice of the 'state' element. > > Unfortunately, as the document is invalid, every possible child of > address is given. > > Since I know the schema, I know which one to insert. If I was the > average author, this > might not be true. Thus, the editor fails to help me "do the right thing". > > I realize that the PSVI is totally useless when it comes to this kind of > support as > once the element is invalid you lose type information for the children. > It would > seem that, within reason, the editor should make a "best-effort" to give > the correct > options. There is probably some kind of attrition point where the > return is minimal or > the options available won't make anymore sense than what is currently > implemented. > > Basically, being able to handle partially valid documents is going to be > a success > factor for content management. For example, suppose you are a publisher > and you > receive XML content from your authors. You know, on a regular basis, > you are going > to receive close-but-invalid content from your authors. Refusal of the > content isn't > always the best option. At least you need to notify the author > something like: "you > forgot the 'state' tag in your 'address' element."
I have tried to reproduce your user experience. For that, I created an XHTML page with a <head> containing a <title> and a <meta>. Then, using a text editor, I removed the <title> inside the <head> and reloaded the document in XXE. <head> was found to be invalid (because a <title> is required here). After selecting the <meta> and clicking on "Insert After", XXE suggested to insert <script>, <link>, <title>, <meta>, <base>, <object>, <style> (that is, all valid siblings of <meta>). Moreover, from XXE V2.5, authors can use "Help|Show Content Model" when they don't know the schema or DTD. Once again XXE is not perfect when dealing with close-but-invalid documents but I wouldn't say that XXE is ridiculous.
