© Disruptive Innovations Etna a wysiwyg XML RELAXNG- and Gecko-based editor

© Disruptive Innovations What is Etna? Editing Tool for Networked Authors an XML editor sponsored by the Connexions Project Open-Source MPL/GPL/LGPL cross-platform based on Gecko

© Disruptive Innovations Genesis Connexions needed a standalone editor –simple to use for people w/o xml knowledge –for the academic world –localizable, internationalizable –power without complexity –markup quality –independent

© Disruptive Innovations Requirements Wysiwyg Open-source, MPL-style preferred RELAX NG validating editor independence

© Disruptive Innovations Choices Gecko –cross-platform –MPL/GPL/LGPL –great I18n/l10n –great extensibility our own RELAX NG implementation

© Disruptive Innovations Constraints 1: simplicity –don’t show the markup! –don’t require XML knowledge at all –don’t show technical details but human friendly texts –the schema’s author should be able to specify default behaviours instead of forcing the user to make choices –the rendering in the editor should be the one a modern browser like Firefox will show/print

© Disruptive Innovations Constraints 2 : clean –Impossible to create or save invalid markup –RELAX NG validator queried by the UI layer –Impossible to load invalid markup

© Disruptive Innovations First (bad) idea –Reuse Nvu, and do some magic to show and manipulate HTML while we internally edit XML Was probably our stupidest idea ever So we decided to implement a new XML editor in Gecko

© Disruptive Innovations libeditor/xml –XML editor –RELAX NG parser Generates a graph from a domdocument holding a relax ng schema –RELAX NG validator Validates a domdocument against a relax ng graph –RELAX NG queries and actions API Allows to query the graph of a relax ng schema

© Disruptive Innovations parser: our extensions 1 –our own namespace extensions/1.0 – defines a « blank » instance for a given rng pattern; multiple blanks are allowed – default value for attribute patterns

© Disruptive Innovations parser: our extensions 2 – doctype to be added to document instances based on the schema – creates a PI in the pattern –, human-readable info for a pattern (Cf. Grif 1989 !!!) – more specifically to extend Etna

© Disruptive Innovations parser: our extensions 3 – to specify stylesheets only using when editing a document based on the current schema –,, to specify what should be the selection or the caret’s position inside a new « blank » pattern

© Disruptive Innovations parser: our extensions 4 – work in progress… we need a way to specify an element « is » a list item, a table cell, … we’re not sure yet it should be in the schema but we don’t want yet another parser, selectors mechanism and path

© Disruptive Innovations parser: our extensions 5 – listen before screaming :-) we claim it should be the RNG author’s responsability to specify two CRs at the end of a list item end the list and create a paragraph so we need a solution describing behaviours and attaching them to pattens

© Disruptive Innovations parser: our extensions 6 –we are open to dicussion –we are open to (deep) changes –we are open to standardization –we just want a viable, reliable, simple solution for problems all SGML/XML folks have been fighting with for TWENTY YEARS.

© Disruptive Innovations validator –validates a domdocument against a RNG schema loaded by our schema manager –hidden by the XML editor and the nsEditingSession –from an implementor’s perspective, just like nsPlaintextEditor or nsHTMLEditor…

© Disruptive Innovations queries: examples –query the rng schema to know if the result of a given action is valid –canDeleteNode(in DOMNode node) –canSetAttribute(in DOMElement elt, in string name, in URI namespaceUri, in string value) –canDeleteSelection() –have access to label, description, … for a given node –get the list of possible « blanks »

© Disruptive Innovations actions: examples –allow to perform actions on the document, in full conformance with the schema create « blanks », triggering UI prompts when needed –doDeleteNode(in DOMNode node) –doSetAttribute(in DOMElement elt, in string name, in URI namespaceUri, in string value) –doDeleteSelection()

© Disruptive Innovations Etna: what else ? –extensible set of datatypes: RNG datatypes and a lot of XML Schema datatypes by default –in theory, the validator is not RNG-specific and can be adapted to other schema languages

© Disruptive Innovations The future of Etna –help schema authors build UI extensions specific to their schemas –MathML –tabeditor… –xulrunner –world domination

© Disruptive Innovations Conclusion –Etna is not only an XML editor it’s also the proof a major project like a wysiwyg XML editor based on Gecko is possible, feasible ; that’s a superb indicator of maturity for Mozilla it’s also the live proof that it’s possible to solve VERY OLD issues with markup-based authoring in the long run, we hope to provide schema authors and the masses with a tool completely hiding the complexity of markup languages

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