psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[D. D. Brierton]

Is there a development roadmap for psgml? I'm wondering if support for XML
namespaces and XML schemas is planned. I'd love to volunteer to help do it
myself but the sad truth is that I'm an awful lisp programmer :-/

Is psgml very actively maintained? Do the developers hang out on these NGs or
elsewhere? I'm curious to know more about what's planned ...

TIA

Best, Darren

-- 
======================================================================
D. D. Brierton            darren@dzr-web.com           www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
======================================================================

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Jerry James]

On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 at 00:17:58 +0000, "D. D. Brierton"
<darren@dzr-web.com> wrote:
> Is there a development roadmap for psgml? I'm wondering if support for XML
> namespaces and XML schemas is planned. I'd love to volunteer to help do it
> myself but the sad truth is that I'm an awful lisp programmer :-/
> 
> Is psgml very actively maintained? Do the developers hang out on these NGs or
> elsewhere? I'm curious to know more about what's planned ...

Check out <URL:http://sourceforge.net/projects/psgml/>.
-- 
Jerry James
http://www.ittc.ku.edu/~james/

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Lennart Staflin]

"D. D. Brierton" <darren@dzr-web.com> writes:

> Is there a development roadmap for psgml? I'm wondering if support for XML
> namespaces and XML schemas is planned. I'd love to volunteer to help do it
> myself but the sad truth is that I'm an awful lisp programmer :-/
> 
> Is psgml very actively maintained? Do the developers hang out on these NGs or
> elsewhere? I'm curious to know more about what's planned ...

Sorry, it is not being developed any more. I maintain it occasionally.

//Lennart

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[D. D. Brierton]

On Fri, 08 Nov 2002 10:47:46 +0000, Lennart Staflin wrote:

>> Is psgml very actively maintained? Do the developers hang out on these NGs
>> or elsewhere? I'm curious to know more about what's planned ...
> 
> Sorry, it is not being developed any more. I maintain it occasionally.

Thanks for replying Lennart. After posting the original message I found out
that you were no longer actively maintaining PSGML, and had put it on
Sourceforge. (I joined the user and developer mailing lists.) I hope someone
steps up to work on it - like I said I would myself but my Lisp just isn't
good enough. It's worrying acually - I work with XML constantly, and PSGML is
just lovely (although maintaining my catalog can be a bit hairy); but
increasingly hybrid documents relying on namespaces, and therefore schemas
for validation, are becoming the norm, and if PSGML doesn't get those features
then I'll no longer be able to use it. And then what WILL I use? (That's
rhetorical - not addressed to you personally!) Given that so many UNIX/Linux
people seem to use Emacs/PSGML as their default XML editing environment I
imagine that there will be a great many of us wondering what on Earth to do
if PSGML doesn't keep up. This is now worrying me ...

Best, Darren

-- 
======================================================================
D. D. Brierton            darren@dzr-web.com           www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
======================================================================

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "D" == D D Brierton <darren@dzr-web.com> writes:

  D> On Fri, 08 Nov 2002 10:47:46 +0000, Lennart Staflin wrote:

  >>> Is psgml very actively maintained? Do the developers hang out on
  >>> these NGs or elsewhere? I'm curious to know more about what's
  >>> planned ...
  >> Sorry, it is not being developed any more. I maintain it
  >> occasionally.

  D> Thanks for replying Lennart. After posting the original message I
  D> found out that you were no longer actively maintaining PSGML, and
  D> had put it on Sourceforge. (I joined the user and developer
  D> mailing lists.) I hope someone steps up to work on it - like I
  D> said I would myself but my Lisp just isn't good enough. It's
  D> worrying acually - I work with XML constantly, and PSGML is just
  D> lovely (although maintaining my catalog can be a bit hairy); but
  D> increasingly hybrid documents relying on namespaces, and
  D> therefore schemas for validation, are becoming the norm, and if
  D> PSGML doesn't get those features then I'll no longer be able to
  D> use it. And then what WILL I use? (That's rhetorical - not
  D> addressed to you personally!) Given that so many UNIX/Linux
  D> people seem to use Emacs/PSGML as their default XML editing
  D> environment I imagine that there will be a great many of us
  D> wondering what on Earth to do if PSGML doesn't keep up. This is
  D> now worrying me ...

Someone, submitted patches a while back to get PSGML mode to work
without a DTD, although obviously with reduced functionality. This, I
have found to be fairly effective. It offers completion, for instance,
of tags based on what is already in the document. It's not as good as
PSGML with DTD, but it's still function.

For using PSGML with xml-schema you can translate the scheme into DTD,
for which there are various tools available. This works fairly well,
and if memory serves well, psgml can cope with namespaces, although it
doesn't understand them (so you have to use a standard prefix
abbreviation). 

Of course, it would be lovely if PSGML were extended to cope with XML
from scratch, but it would be a lot of work. 

Phil

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>]

Brierton <darren@dzr-web.com> writes:
> worrying acually - I work with XML constantly, and PSGML is just
> lovely (although maintaining my catalog can be a bit hairy); but
> increasingly hybrid documents relying on namespaces, and
> therefore schemas for validation, are becoming the norm, and if
> PSGML doesn't get those features then I'll no longer be able to
> use it. And then what WILL I use? (That's rhetorical - not

You can try out Emacs' built-in sgml-mode which is much less featureful
than PSGML but doesn't require anything like a DTD.
The version that comes with Emacs-21.2 is severely under-featured
in many respects, but the version in the development code
http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/emacs/emacs/lisp/textmodes/sgml-mode.el?rev=HEAD
supposedly works with Emacs-21.2 and provides XML support and indentation.

I'd be interested to hear any comment about it,


        Stefan

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[D. D. Brierton]

On Fri, 08 Nov 2002 16:14:10 +0000, Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com> wrote:

> You can try out Emacs' built-in sgml-mode which is much less featureful than
> PSGML but doesn't require anything like a DTD. The version that comes with
> Emacs-21.2 is severely under-featured in many respects, but the version in
> the development code
> http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/emacs/emacs/lisp/textmodes/sgml-mode.el?rev=HEAD
> supposedly works with Emacs-21.2 and provides XML support and indentation.
> 
> I'd be interested to hear any comment about it,

I'll download it and give it a try (I'm still using 21.1 - hopefully it will
work with that too). I assume that just commenting out the stuff referring to
PSGML in my .emacs will be sufficient to enable sgml-mode's XML mode).

But what I am really after is the features of PSGML but more XML rather than
SGML centric. The fact that PSGML parses the DTD and then provides
context-sensitive menus for inserting elements and attributes is what makes it
so useful for me. What I'd like in a dream-case scenario is for it to parse
schemas instead of DTDs and work with hybrid documents containing markup from
different namespaces (and in particular make it easy to insert the proper
namespaces - I always have to look them up and type them in by hand). That
would be much handier than being able to work with DTD-less generic XML, or
relying solely on external tools for all validating. Pretty soon Mozilla will
have native support for XHTML+MathML+SVG, and I'd like to have a nice
environment for writing documents of that type, and include metadata in RDF.

I'll get back to you re the new SGML mode ...

Best, Darren

-- 
======================================================================
D. D. Brierton            darren@dzr-web.com           www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
======================================================================

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[D. D. Brierton]

On Fri, 08 Nov 2002 16:14:10 +0000, Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com> wrote:

> You can try out Emacs' built-in sgml-mode which is much less featureful than
> PSGML but doesn't require anything like a DTD. The version that comes with
> Emacs-21.2 is severely under-featured in many respects, but the version in
> the development code
> http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/emacs/emacs/lisp/textmodes/sgml-mode.el?rev=HEAD
> supposedly works with Emacs-21.2 and provides XML support and indentation.
> 
> I'd be interested to hear any comment about it,

Hi Stefan,

I downloaded the development code and tried it with 21.1. (I commented out
the section of my .emacs on PSGML.) I tried it with this docment:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"
[
<!ENTITY content SYSTEM "content.xml">
]>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-GB">
  <head>
    <title>Emacs/PSGML Wrapper</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    &content;
  </body>
</html>

The syntac highlighting is nice (nicer than PSGML's). Indenting seems to work
nicely too. However, SGML -> Insert Attributes allows returns "Wrong context
for adding attribute" regardless of where the cursor is. If I attempt to tab
complete on SGML -> Insert Tag it gives ! and then a further tab gives me the
choice of:

Possible completions are:
![				   !attlist
!doctype			   !element
!entity

I wasn't really expecting any tab completion (I assume no parsing or attempt
to read the DTD takes place), but why does it offer to insert things which
belong in the internal subset of the document type declaration regardless of
where I am in the document? Is that expected behaviour? Are there any
specific tests you'd like me to run before I re-enable PSGML?

Best, Darren

-- 
======================================================================
D. D. Brierton            darren@dzr-web.com           www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
======================================================================

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Galen Boyer]

On Fri, 08 Nov 2002, darren@dzr-web.com wrote:

> I'll download it and give it a try (I'm still using 21.1 -
> hopefully it will work with that too). I assume that just
> commenting out the stuff referring to PSGML in my .emacs will
> be sufficient to enable sgml-mode's XML mode).
> 
> But what I am really after is the features of PSGML but more
> XML rather than SGML centric. The fact that PSGML parses the
> DTD and then provides context-sensitive menus for inserting
> elements and attributes is what makes it so useful for me. 

I'd recommend that you download the XAE and try it out.  It does
this very nicely.

> What I'd like in a dream-case scenario is for it to parse
> schemas instead of DTDs and work with hybrid documents
> containing markup from different namespaces (and in particular
> make it easy to insert the proper namespaces - I always have to
> look them up and type them in by hand). 

I don't know how it deals with this, but I'm sure Paul would be
interested in making it work.

> That would be much handier than being able to work with
> DTD-less generic XML, or relying solely on external tools for
> all validating.


-- 
Galen Boyer

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>]

>>>>> "D" == D D Brierton <darren@dzr-web.com> writes:
> I'll download it and give it a try (I'm still using 21.1 - hopefully it will
> work with that too). I assume that just commenting out the stuff referring to
> PSGML in my .emacs will be sufficient to enable sgml-mode's XML mode).

That should work.  Ideally, PSGML should use the `psgml-' prefix everywhere
so that both modes can coexist, but I don't think anybody has tried to
do that.

> But what I am really after is the features of PSGML but more XML rather
> than SGML centric.  The fact that PSGML parses the DTD and then provides
> context-sensitive menus for inserting elements and attributes is what
> makes it so useful for me.

Then sgml-mode.el will disappoint you.  And that won't be fixed: I don't
intend to reimplement PSGML in sgml-mode.el ;-)


        Stefan

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[D. D. Brierton]

On Fri, 08 Nov 2002 17:16:25 +0000, Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com> wrote:

> Then sgml-mode.el will disappoint you.  And that won't be fixed: I don't
> intend to reimplement PSGML in sgml-mode.el ;-)

I wasn't expecting that! I posted some comments in a separate post. Let me
know if you want me to perform some specific tests on it ...

-- 
======================================================================
D. D. Brierton            darren@dzr-web.com           www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
======================================================================

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[D. D. Brierton]

On Fri, 08 Nov 2002 17:10:36 +0000, Galen Boyer wrote:

>> But what I am really after is the features of PSGML but more XML rather
>> than SGML centric. The fact that PSGML parses the DTD and then provides
>> context-sensitive menus for inserting elements and attributes is what makes
>> it so useful for me.
> 
> I'd recommend that you download the XAE and try it out.  It does this very
> nicely.

I thought XAE just was PSGML with a load of java and docbook stuff included.
Is that wrong? XAE's homepage doesn't contain much information.

The thing is that I've already got PSGML set up nicely, and using
onsgmls/openjade for validating suits me so far. I once tried XAE but it
turned out my java environment wasn't configured right, and then I got
totally lost trying to figure that out and eventually gave up. I could
certainly be persuaded to give it another go if I understood what was "value
added" about it (and also if it didn't mean having to scrap all the stuff
I've done so far on configuring psmgl to work how I like it) ...

> I don't know how it deals with this, but I'm sure Paul would be interested
> in making it work.

Well schemas and namespace are certainly a core part of XML's direction, and
I don't see how any full-featured XML editing environment can not support
them, but at the same time to the best of my understanding XAE just uses
PSGML, and Lennart and others have implied that adding support for them would
involve a very major re-write. I really wish I wasn't such a hopeless Lisp
programmer, because I would otherwise enjoy trying to do it myself.

Best, Darren

-- 
======================================================================
D. D. Brierton            darren@dzr-web.com           www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
======================================================================

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Galen Boyer]

On Fri, 08 Nov 2002, darren@dzr-web.com wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Nov 2002 17:10:36 +0000, Galen Boyer wrote:
> 
>>> But what I am really after is the features of PSGML but more XML
>>> rather than SGML centric. The fact that PSGML parses the DTD and
>>> then provides context-sensitive menus for inserting elements and
>>> attributes is what makes it so useful for me.
>> 
>> I'd recommend that you download the XAE and try it out.  It does this
>> very nicely.
> 
> I thought XAE just was PSGML with a load of java and docbook stuff
> included.  Is that wrong? 

It uses PSGML mode for the structured editing but then it has built in
parsing of the dtd so that you get context sensitive tag creation
through menus.  I find this quite helpful.

It supports the docbook right out of the box, but any other available
dtd that you reference can be the dtd for that document and that dtd
will get parsed and context sensitive menus created for that document.
I like it mostly cause it has the built-in xslt processor and a menu
item,

   XAE --> View Document --> In Html Browser

With this click, the file I'm working in gets transformed and my browser
gets instantiated with the transformed document.  Very helpful.

> XAE's homepage doesn't contain much information.

Yeah, XAE is written by Paul Kunnican, the author of the JDEE.  That is
his baby and where the bulk of his time is spent.

> The thing is that I've already got PSGML set up nicely, and using
> onsgmls/openjade for validating suits me so far. 

I'm not sure how it would actually affect your current environment.  You
probably would need to install the XAE and then get your stuff working
again, this time with the XAE in use.  There was an earlier version when
the XAE frustrated me because the lack of a DTD seemed to make it
unusable, but the mode for the DTDless XML file I was in was still the
XAE.  It seems to be corrected now (it doesn't seem so pissed off if
there isn't a DTD anymore), but I am really only using it for docbook
authoring of XML, so I can't say for sure.

> I once tried XAE but it turned out my java environment wasn't
> configured right, and then I got totally lost trying to figure that
> out and eventually gave up. 

Not sure how to soften those frustrations.  If your java environment
isn't correct, the XAE isn't going to correct it.  But, you could ask
the XAE list on how to correct it.  You might get an answer.

> I could certainly be persuaded to give it another go if I understood
> what was "value added" about it (and also if it didn't mean having to
> scrap all the stuff I've done so far on configuring psmgl to work how
> I like it) ...
>
>> I don't know how it deals with this, but I'm sure Paul would be
>> interested in making it work.
> 
> Well schemas and namespace are certainly a core part of XML's
> direction, and I don't see how any full-featured XML editing
> environment can not support them, but at the same time to the best of
> my understanding XAE just uses PSGML, and Lennart and others have
> implied that adding support for them would involve a very major
> re-write. 

I think the context sensitive menu creation by parsing the referenced
DTD is what you mean by supporting?

> I really wish I wasn't such a hopeless Lisp programmer, because I
> would otherwise enjoy trying to do it myself.

The last thing that makes the XAE attractive to me, is that Paul's JDE
is a really nice package.  I see the XAE having even a much fuller
environment as Paul turns his concentrations to it.  It is extremely
useful already.  I'd like to be a user and help him by offering my
perspective as a user.  So, I guess I'm saying that I trust that the
package will remain in active development for quite some time, and
seeing the power of the JDE makes me wonder what the XAE will look like
in the future.

-- 
Galen deForest Boyer
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[D. D. Brierton]

On Sun, 10 Nov 2002 01:41:09 +0000, Galen Boyer wrote:

> It uses PSGML mode for the structured editing but then it has built in
> parsing of the dtd so that you get context sensitive tag creation through
> menus.  I find this quite helpful.

I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that it is PSGML which is providing
that functionality. PSGML on its own has the capability to parse a DTD and
then offer context sensitive menus for inserting elements and attributes
(i.e. the contents of the menus only reflect what would be valid at that
point in the document).

> It supports the docbook right out of the box, but any other available dtd
> that you reference can be the dtd for that document and that dtd will get
> parsed and context sensitive menus created for that document. I like it
> mostly cause it has the built-in xslt processor and a menu item,
> 
>    XAE --> View Document --> In Html Browser

The thing is that I am either working directly with XHTML anyway, or writing
my own XSL transformations which I then use via PHP. (I'm a web developer
working mostly with the XML family, PHP, Javascript and CSS.) Things which
are very cool if you are primarily a Docbook writer are not necessarily that
useful for me.

> Not sure how to soften those frustrations.  If your java environment isn't
> correct, the XAE isn't going to correct it.  But, you could ask the XAE list
> on how to correct it.  You might get an answer.

And also that was a while ago and I'm now using a much more up-to-date Linux
and so it's entirely possible that my Java problems have gone away.

>> Well schemas and namespace are certainly a core part of XML's direction,
>> and I don't see how any full-featured XML editing environment can not
>> support them, but at the same time to the best of my understanding XAE just
>> uses PSGML, and Lennart and others have implied that adding support for
>> them would involve a very major re-write.
> 
> I think the context sensitive menu creation by parsing the referenced DTD is
> what you mean by supporting?

Yes. For the kind of stuff I'm working on, either for current clients, or as
future prodiucts to sell to clients, hybrid XML documents are becoming the
norm. By that I mean documents which contain markup from more than one XML
application; such documents depend on namespaces for validation and DTDs
don't understand namespaces so XML schemas *have* to be used instead. Ideally,
ones editing environment should also understand that documents can be hybrid
and instead of looking to the DTD for populating menus for the insertion of
elements or attributes they need to be able to understand namespaces.

> The last thing that makes the XAE attractive to me, is that Paul's JDE is a
> really nice package.  I see the XAE having even a much fuller environment as
> Paul turns his concentrations to it.  It is extremely useful already.  I'd
> like to be a user and help him by offering my perspective as a user.  So, I
> guess I'm saying that I trust that the package will remain in active
> development for quite some time, and seeing the power of the JDE makes me
> wonder what the XAE will look like in the future.

Well on top of beng rubbish at lisp, I'm pretty rubbish at Java! (Please
don't let there be anyone I work for reading this!) But I've seen the JDE and
it is truly impressive. You are convincing me to investigate the XAE further,
but I think the bottom line is that I need an XML editing environment that
groks namespaces and schemas, and at the moment XAE looks like it is very
much aimed at the Docbook writer. PSGML is the nearest thing I've found, but
maybe trying to make PSGML understand namespaces and schemas is too big a
poject, in which case we need another package altogether. And that thought
makes me feel a little glum ...

Best, Darren

P.S. This was written very late at night after much wine, so if I'm not
making sense I apologise.

-- 
======================================================================
D. D. Brierton            darren@dzr-web.com           www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
======================================================================

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Galen Boyer]

On Sun, 10 Nov 2002, darren@dzr-web.com wrote:
> On Sun, 10 Nov 2002 01:41:09 +0000, Galen Boyer wrote:
> 
>> It uses PSGML mode for the structured editing but then it has built
>> in parsing of the dtd so that you get context sensitive tag creation
>> through menus.  I find this quite helpful.
> 
> I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that it is PSGML which is
> providing that functionality. PSGML on its own has the capability to
> parse a DTD and then offer context sensitive menus for inserting
> elements and attributes (i.e. the contents of the menus only reflect
> what would be valid at that point in the document).

Hm...  It looks like you are correct.  His package has a psgml mode
installed stock, and his code either finds a current one or uses the one
he has in his directory structure.  After reading some of the PSGML
info, this seems to be where the context-sensitive menus are coming
from.  (I will have to disable the XAE and use PSGML stand-alone for
awhile to understand it even more.

His stuff is the applying the stylesheets and transforming and sending
to the browser.  He has some java written which gets called as well.

>> It supports the docbook right out of the box, but any other available
>> dtd that you reference can be the dtd for that document and that dtd
>> will get parsed and context sensitive menus created for that
>> document. I like it mostly cause it has the built-in xslt processor
>> and a menu item,
>> 
>>    XAE --> View Document --> In Html Browser
> 
> The thing is that I am either working directly with XHTML anyway, or
> writing my own XSL transformations which I then use via PHP. (I'm a
> web developer working mostly with the XML family, PHP, Javascript and
> CSS.) Things which are very cool if you are primarily a Docbook writer
> are not necessarily that useful for me.

I'm using the XAE to author documentation for the company I just started
with.  I don't get nearly as deep into dealing with tagged files as you
would. 

>> Not sure how to soften those frustrations.  If your java environment
>> isn't correct, the XAE isn't going to correct it.  But, you could ask
>> the XAE list on how to correct it.  You might get an answer.
> 
> And also that was a while ago and I'm now using a much more up-to-date
> Linux and so it's entirely possible that my Java problems have gone
> away.
> 
>>> Well schemas and namespace are certainly a core part of XML's
>>> direction, and I don't see how any full-featured XML editing
>>> environment can not support them, but at the same time to the best
>>> of my understanding XAE just uses PSGML, and Lennart and others have
>>> implied that adding support for them would involve a very major
>>> re-write.
>> 
>> I think the context sensitive menu creation by parsing the referenced
>> DTD is what you mean by supporting?
> 
> Yes. For the kind of stuff I'm working on, either for current clients,
> or as future prodiucts to sell to clients, hybrid XML documents are
> becoming the norm. By that I mean documents which contain markup from
> more than one XML application; such documents depend on namespaces for
> validation and DTDs don't understand namespaces so XML schemas *have*
> to be used instead. Ideally, ones editing environment should also
> understand that documents can be hybrid and instead of looking to the
> DTD for populating menus for the insertion of elements or attributes
> they need to be able to understand namespaces.

I see.  I don't know how the XAE deals with namespaces, but it probably
won't matter, because PSGML is what would need to deal with namespaces
and it looks like it won't be.

>> The last thing that makes the XAE attractive to me, is that Paul's
>> JDE is a really nice package.  I see the XAE having even a much
>> fuller environment as Paul turns his concentrations to it.  It is
>> extremely useful already.  I'd like to be a user and help him by
>> offering my perspective as a user.  So, I guess I'm saying that I
>> trust that the package will remain in active development for quite
>> some time, and seeing the power of the JDE makes me wonder what the
>> XAE will look like in the future.
> 
> Well on top of beng rubbish at lisp, I'm pretty rubbish at Java!
> (Please don't let there be anyone I work for reading this!) But I've
> seen the JDE and it is truly impressive. You are convincing me to
> investigate the XAE further, but I think the bottom line is that I
> need an XML editing environment that groks namespaces and schemas, and
> at the moment XAE looks like it is very much aimed at the Docbook
> writer. 

Out of the box is docbook.  I think Paul actually did it a disservice
because one might gleam that is the only thing it will do.

> PSGML is the nearest thing I've found, but maybe trying to make PSGML
> understand namespaces and schemas is too big a poject, in which case
> we need another package altogether. And that thought makes me feel a
> little glum ...

I don't have this problem but I feel for you.  Having to leave Emacs to
edit things makes me glum when I have to do it as well.

> Best, Darren
> 
> P.S. This was written very late at night after much wine, so if I'm
> not making sense I apologise.

I'm a beer drinker myself.  Wine makes my head hurt.
-- 
Galen deForest Boyer
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Kai Großjohann]

"D. D. Brierton" <darren@dzr-web.com> writes:

> Yes. For the kind of stuff I'm working on, either for current clients, or as
> future prodiucts to sell to clients, hybrid XML documents are becoming the
> norm. By that I mean documents which contain markup from more than one XML
> application; such documents depend on namespaces for validation and DTDs
> don't understand namespaces so XML schemas *have* to be used instead. Ideally,
> ones editing environment should also understand that documents can be hybrid
> and instead of looking to the DTD for populating menus for the insertion of
> elements or attributes they need to be able to understand namespaces.

I agree that you need namespaces and XML schemas.  This is only a
stopgap measure to provide half-baked "support".

If you construct a DTD which has all the elements from all the
schemas involved, complete with their prefix, then you might be able
to use that.  Of course, this means that you need to decide on a
prefix for your documents.  But at least you could get tags
completion this way.

I agree that it is painful, however, to construct a DTD for all
mixtures of schemas that you might need.  However, maybe you can get
away with making ONE DTD that contains ALL schemas that you work with.

kai
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[D. D. Brierton]

On Sun, 10 Nov 2002 14:45:49 +0000, Kai Großjohann wrote:

> I agree that you need namespaces and XML schemas.  This is only a stopgap
> measure to provide half-baked "support".
> 
> If you construct a DTD which has all the elements from all the schemas
> involved, complete with their prefix, then you might be able to use that. Of
> course, this means that you need to decide on a prefix for your documents. 
> But at least you could get tags completion this way.
> 
> I agree that it is painful, however, to construct a DTD for all mixtures of
> schemas that you might need.  However, maybe you can get away with making
> ONE DTD that contains ALL schemas that you work with.

Theoretically that is certainly doable; pragmatically I'm not sure it is. It
would take me simply ages to compile this one great big DTD, and then on
publishing all the documents would have to have their DTDs changed again, to
something which isn't specific to my system (admittedly that's pretty simple
but a pain nonetheless). As the W3C publishes new applications at a rate
of knots these days I'd be spending more time trying to maintain my super DTD
then I would working!

Thanks for the suggestion anyway. It will certainly be worth bearing in mind
if no other solution looks likely.

Best, Darren

-- 
======================================================================
D. D. Brierton            darren@dzr-web.com           www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
======================================================================

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Kai Großjohann]

"D. D. Brierton" <darren@dzr-web.com> writes:

> As the W3C publishes new applications at a rate of knots these days
> I'd be spending more time trying to maintain my super DTD then I
> would working!

Hm.  Maybe the process can be automated in some way.  I think there is
a way to convert a schema into a dtd by some script.  Then you "just"
need to figure out how to combine the dtds.  (After, of course, adding
all them namespace prefixes to the individual dtds.)  Maybe the most
difficult part is to figure out where to allow merging the dtds, and
how to frob the content model from schema A to allow elements from
schema B.

But it sounds doable.

kai
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: psgml - support for XML namespaces and schemas?

[Matt Armstrong]

"Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:

> Brierton <darren@dzr-web.com> writes:
>> worrying acually - I work with XML constantly, and PSGML is just
>> lovely (although maintaining my catalog can be a bit hairy); but
>> increasingly hybrid documents relying on namespaces, and
>> therefore schemas for validation, are becoming the norm, and if
>> PSGML doesn't get those features then I'll no longer be able to
>> use it. And then what WILL I use? (That's rhetorical - not
>
> You can try out Emacs' built-in sgml-mode which is much less
> featureful than PSGML but doesn't require anything like a DTD.  The
> version that comes with Emacs-21.2 is severely under-featured in
> many respects, but the version in the development code
>
> http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/emacs/emacs/lisp/textmodes/sgml-mode.el?rev=HEAD
>
> supposedly works with Emacs-21.2 and provides XML support and
> indentation.
>
> I'd be interested to hear any comment about it,

I tried this out with Emacs 21.2 and it seems to work well.  The
indentation and fontification satisfy most of what I want from a mode
since my editing is usually casual.