CMS 2005: WYSIWYG Editing

In its raw form, XML is an arcane format that is not suitable for direct editing by journalists and editors. In fact, despite the systems that have been implemented by many publishers around the world, not only is it difficult for non-technical authors to edit XML directly, but allowing them to do so is dangerous as it risks creating invalid content that cannot be processed at a later date. This is because XML documents must be structured in an exact format according to special definitions held in files known as DTDs and schemas, or they become invalid.

Consequently the last few years has seen the emergence of special XML editors that facilitate editing in the traditional “visual style”, commonly referred to as WYSIWYG. These enable a programmer to define a special virtual rendering of an XML document through which the underlying structured format can be edited, without breaking the specification of its DTD or schema. Of course, XML does not have a true appearance in the sense of a Microsoft Word or Quark document, but a programmer can define a suitable visualization of the document that makes it very easy to edit. This has transformed the ability of non-technical authors to interact with complex XML documents.

System 7 CMS makes it possible to use a variety of such editors for creating and editing XML documents, and comes configured with the free Web browser-based Authentic XML editor supplied by Altova and default visualizations for commonly used article formats such as NITF. More information about the Authentic editor can be found at http://www.altova.com/products_doc.html.