Louis.Strous at consul.com wrote: > > L.S., > > http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/limitations.html says > > XMLmind XML Editor (XXE) cannot be used to edit the physical structure > of an XML document (entities, CDATA sections, marked sections). Any > well-formed XML document making use of these features can, of course, be > opened in XXE, but as soon as the document is loaded, these constructs > are expanded and forgotten. Note that this limitation is not as severe > as it seems because > > * XXE supports the authoring of modular documents > > <http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/user/tutorial_modular_document.html> > (even very fine grained ones). > * When needed and when possible, XXE saves characters as references > to character entities. > * XXE can be configured to save specific elements (example: XHTML > script) as CDATA sections. > > > That text implies that one can always reasonably work around this > limitation, but I disagree. This limitation does seem severe for > entities that stand for short fixed text that gets used a lot and that > must be changed after some period of time, such as "&productversion;" to > refer to the version of the product described in the document. As far > as I can tell, none of the mitigating factors mentioned above can be > used in this case. It can be a big chore to replace all "8" that refer > to the current product version by "9", because you have to double-check > that every replaced "8" really referred to the product version and not > to something else, and because you may have to check a large number of > individual files (because of the modularity). If I can use an entity > "&productversion;" in my document and then define that to be equal to > "8" in one location, then I only need to change that single definition > when the document must be updated for the next version of the product. > It is not a big limitation if the /definition/ of the entities cannot > be edited using XXE, but it /is/ a severe limitation that any document > that /uses/ such entities cannot be edited using XXE. > > I request that the use of entitites that stand for fixed text (as > opposed to entities that refer to other modules) be supported by XXE. > It would be acceptable (to me) to just leave unexpanded those uses of > entities (or even all entities, perhaps except for character entities) > until transformation to a different kind of document (e.g., PDF) is > requested. E.g., display "This manual describes OurProduct version > &productversion;" just like that in XXE, rather than expanding > "&productversion;" to its current value of, e.g., "8", and then > completely forgetting about "&productversion;". Perhaps it would be > easy to add an option to choose between expanding or not expanding > entities? I'll gladly trade expansion of entities in XXE for being able > to retain entities after editing in XXE. Not being able to use "XML > variables" like "&productversion;" is really a major drawback of XXE, in > my opinion. I'll have to figure out a way around that limitation, or > else abandon XXE. >
I agree with the fact that support of XML variables is really needed, but what's wrong with what is described in "Extensive use of the "Copy as Reference" command"? http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/user/tutorial_modular_document.html#extensive_copy_as_reference Wrap your ``XML variables'' in HTML span or DocBook phrase elements. Give each variable a unique ID. Declare and *document* these variables in a companion ``glossary document''. Then simply "Copy as Reference" an ``XML variables'' from the ``glossary document'' and Paste it in the document you are editing. By doing this: [1] You can create, document, maintain, etc, your XML variables using XXE itself. Something you cannot do with references to entities declared in the DTD internal subset. [2] You can easily share your XML variables between different documents. Something you cannot do with references to entities declared in the DTD internal subset. XXE has always been designed as a topic editor (long before DITA was invented). While references to entities are great when you work at the physical level with a bunch of XML files and a text editor, we don't see how references to entities fit in a world of loosely coupled topics conforming to a one or more schemas. This to say that we'll probably never implement your request (no offense intended).
