Philippe Nobili wrote:
> When editing DocBook documents, we usually use the raw XML view on the
> left in combination with the styled (central) view; it is especially
> useful for beginners who are lost with the DocBook very rich set of
> elements and sometimes complex hierarchical structure.
I'm sorry but we fundamentally don't agree on this. Having the tree view
very rarely helps. The node path bar is sufficient to understand to
structure of the document, whatever the complexity of the structure.
>
> Currently (up to version 4.0.0), it is not easy to locate the caret or a
> selected element simultaneously in both views. We think that with little
> modifications the synchronization between these views could be made more
> efficient and help our editors a lot:
>
> 1) When scrolling one of the two view, keep the top element in sync in
> both views; this would be clearer than the current behavior.
> 2) When position the caret in one the views, or selecting an element,
> made both selections or carets appear at the same horizontal position in
> both views
>
I'm sorry but XMLmind XML Editor has not been designed to be used with
both the tree view and the styled view side by side. It is unlikely that
we ever improve the synchronizations of the views.
If we really wanted to do that, the best solution would be to get rid of
the tree view (which is just a ``normal view'' having no CSS style
sheet) and replace it with a specialized, highly optimized for the task,
pane similar to those found in all the other structured document editors.
---
PS:
--> We have implemented the possibility of having several views of the
same document in a single window just to show off ("pour la frime", en
Fran?ais).
In practice, we don't think this feature is really useful...Except from
time to time:
* the tree view: show me the code of the <svg> element currently
displayed as a graphic, show me the structure of the XHTML <select>
element currently displayed as a list control, etc.
* DocBook's document structure view: demote/promote chapters and sections.
--> The tree view alone is useful when a CSS style sheet has not been
developed for a document type and/or when it does not make sense to
develop one. For example: one of my colleagues routinely uses the tree
view of XXE to view and edit XSL-FO elements.
