Web Editing Software

[Miguel Orrego]

Hi,

Can anybody recommend a good freeware WYSIWYG editor with code view as well?

Thanks.

[Rob Collyer]

"Miguel Orrego" <mi****@stressedmonkey.net-nospam> wrote in
news:40**********************@reading.news.pipex.n et:

Hi,

Can anybody recommend a good freeware WYSIWYG editor with code view as
well?

Thanks.

Hi Miguel,

There are many free ones out there... but did you want it just for html,
or for html / css ? you may even want ASP / PHP / JSP support.

What did you have in mind?

I would however recommend that you are very knowledgable of html before
you begin using a wysiwyg editor...... purely because if a tool does it
all for you, you'll ever learn. Learn it first, then use a wysiwyg
editor.... (most people once learnt, will never use these editors anyway
purely coz they bloat your code)

--
Robert Collyer
www.webforumz.com
Free Web Design and Development Help, Discussions, tips and Critique!
ASP, VB, .NET, SQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, XML, SEO !

[David Dorward]

Miguel Orrego wrote:

Can anybody recommend a good freeware WYSIWYG editor with code view as
well?

No such thing exists.

Mozilla Composer / Nvu is probably the least bad.

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

[Miguel Orrego]

Hi Rob,

The software would be used by content editors on the company's intranet, I
am quite competent in html etc, but the editors won't have time to learn it
therefore we need a free product that people updating content can use as the
money is not available to supply dreamwever / frontpage to the company as a
whole. Any recommendations appreciated.

Thanks.
"Rob Collyer" <we*******@webforumz.com> wrote in message
news:Xn**********************************@217.32.2 52.50...

"Miguel Orrego" <mi****@stressedmonkey.net-nospam> wrote in
news:40**********************@reading.news.pipex.n et:

Hi,

Can anybody recommend a good freeware WYSIWYG editor with code view as
well?

Thanks.

Hi Miguel,

There are many free ones out there... but did you want it just for html,
or for html / css ? you may even want ASP / PHP / JSP support.

What did you have in mind?

I would however recommend that you are very knowledgable of html before
you begin using a wysiwyg editor...... purely because if a tool does it
all for you, you'll ever learn. Learn it first, then use a wysiwyg
editor.... (most people once learnt, will never use these editors anyway
purely coz they bloat your code)

--
Robert Collyer
www.webforumz.com
Free Web Design and Development Help, Discussions, tips and Critique!
ASP, VB, .NET, SQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, XML, SEO !

[Rob Collyer]

"Miguel Orrego" <mi****@stressedmonkey.net-nospam> wrote in
news:40**********************@reading.news.pipex.n et:

Hi Rob,

The software would be used by content editors on the company's
intranet, I am quite competent in html etc, but the editors won't have
time to learn it therefore we need a free product that people updating
content can use as the money is not available to supply dreamwever /
frontpage to the company as a whole. Any recommendations appreciated.

Thanks.
"Rob Collyer" <we*******@webforumz.com> wrote in message
news:Xn**********************************@217.32.2 52.50...

"Miguel Orrego" <mi****@stressedmonkey.net-nospam> wrote in
news:40**********************@reading.news.pipex.n et:

> Hi,
>
> Can anybody recommend a good freeware WYSIWYG editor with code view
> as well?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>

Hi Miguel,

There are many free ones out there... but did you want it just for
html, or for html / css ? you may even want ASP / PHP / JSP
support.

What did you have in mind?

I would however recommend that you are very knowledgable of html
before you begin using a wysiwyg editor...... purely because if a
tool does it all for you, you'll ever learn. Learn it first, then
use a wysiwyg editor.... (most people once learnt, will never use
these editors anyway purely coz they bloat your code)

--
Robert Collyer
www.webforumz.com
Free Web Design and Development Help, Discussions, tips and Critique!
ASP, VB, .NET, SQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, XML, SEO !

If the authors are all using Internet Explorer, it may be worth using a browser
based wysiwyg editor.

Do a search on Google for:-
browser based wysiwyg rich text editor

There are some free ones of these floating around.

Hope this helps.

--
Robert Collyer
www.webforumz.com
Free Web Design and Development Help, Discussions, tips and Critique!
ASP, VB, .NET, SQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, XML, SEO !

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Miguel Orrego sailed boldly out atop a fullquote:

Hi Rob,
You're addressing a usenet newsgroup about authoring HTML for the WWW,
you know...
The software would be used by content editors on the company's intranet,
That doesn't necessarily mean that you can disregard WWW good
practice. Discrimination against employees is taken more seriously
than discrimination against customers, in some legislations (IANAL).
There's lots of reasons why following good WWW practices (which are
also on-topic for this group) can also be a good idea for intranets
(which are not).
I am quite competent in html etc,
So you'll be aware that with HTML, "what you get" is a marked-up
logical structure, not a visual display; and be able to understand
that the widely-misused term "WYSIWYG" is meaningless in such a
context.
but the editors won't have time to learn it
If they have no idea what the structure of their content is, there's
no tool on Earth that can guess it for them.
therefore we need a free product that people updating content can use
Garbage in, garbage out?
Any recommendations appreciated.

Recommendations as to a package are pointless if the authors don't
have any grasp of what they're doing.

If the content of the pages has a relatively fixed structure, some
kind of standard template can be useful, into which they pour their
content.

good luck

[Rob Collyer]

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@ph.gla.ac.uk> wrote in
news:Pi*******************************@ppepc56.ph. gla.ac.uk:

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Miguel Orrego sailed boldly out atop a fullquote:

Hi Rob,
You're addressing a usenet newsgroup about authoring HTML for the WWW,
you know...

The software would be used by content editors on the company's

intranet,
That doesn't necessarily mean that you can disregard WWW good
practice. Discrimination against employees is taken more seriously
than discrimination against customers, in some legislations (IANAL).
There's lots of reasons why following good WWW practices (which are
also on-topic for this group) can also be a good idea for intranets
(which are not).

I am quite competent in html etc,

So you'll be aware that with HTML, "what you get" is a marked-up
logical structure, not a visual display; and be able to understand
that the widely-misused term "WYSIWYG" is meaningless in such a
context.

but the editors won't have time to learn it

If they have no idea what the structure of their content is, there's
no tool on Earth that can guess it for them.

therefore we need a free product that people updating content can use

Garbage in, garbage out?

Any recommendations appreciated.

Recommendations as to a package are pointless if the authors don't
have any grasp of what they're doing.

If the content of the pages has a relatively fixed structure, some
kind of standard template can be useful, into which they pour their
content.

good luck

I have to say Alan, that is an extremely negative and pessamistic outlook
you have there.

--
Robert Collyer
www.webforumz.com
Free Web Design and Development Help, Discussions, tips and Critique!
ASP, VB, .NET, SQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, XML, SEO !

[Chris Morris]

Rob Collyer <we*******@webforumz.com> writes:

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@ph.gla.ac.uk> wrote in

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Miguel Orrego sailed boldly out atop a fullquote:

but the editors won't have time to learn it

If they have no idea what the structure of their content is, there's
no tool on Earth that can guess it for them.

Any recommendations appreciated.

Recommendations as to a package are pointless if the authors don't
have any grasp of what they're doing.

If the content of the pages has a relatively fixed structure, some
kind of standard template can be useful, into which they pour their
content.

I have to say Alan, that is an extremely negative and pessamistic outlook
you have there.

Accurate, though.

Getting well structured content from people who don't know much
(anything) about HTML structure is difficult, and something I've been
doing a fair bit of work on recently. I'd agree that standard
templates - at the content block as well as the page level - are
probably the way to go if training the authors properly isn't an
option (and sometimes it isn't, there's just too many of them).

--
Chris

[Rob Collyer]

Chris Morris <c.********@durham.ac.uk> wrote in
news:87************@dinopsis.dur.ac.uk:

Rob Collyer <we*******@webforumz.com> writes:

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@ph.gla.ac.uk> wrote in

> On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Miguel Orrego sailed boldly out atop a
> fullquote:
>> but the editors won't have time to learn it
>
> If they have no idea what the structure of their content is,
> there's no tool on Earth that can guess it for them.
>
>> Any recommendations appreciated.
>
> Recommendations as to a package are pointless if the authors don't
> have any grasp of what they're doing.
>
> If the content of the pages has a relatively fixed structure, some
> kind of standard template can be useful, into which they pour their
> content.

I have to say Alan, that is an extremely negative and pessamistic
outlook you have there.

Accurate, though.

Getting well structured content from people who don't know much
(anything) about HTML structure is difficult, and something I've been
doing a fair bit of work on recently. I'd agree that standard
templates - at the content block as well as the page level - are
probably the way to go if training the authors properly isn't an
option (and sometimes it isn't, there's just too many of them).

When there are XHTML compliant web based WYSIWYG editors out there, then
this is really null and void.

If they have limited available styles to choose from for text, or other
content, then where's the issue? They can only add content within
the defined parameters of the CSS styles you set up!

--
Robert Collyer
www.webforumz.com
Free Web Design and Development Help, Discussions, tips and Critique!
ASP, VB, .NET, SQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, XML, SEO !

[Chris Morris]

Rob Collyer <we*******@webforumz.com> writes:

Chris Morris <c.********@durham.ac.uk> wrote in

Getting well structured content from people who don't know much
(anything) about HTML structure is difficult, and something I've been
doing a fair bit of work on recently. I'd agree that standard
templates - at the content block as well as the page level - are
probably the way to go if training the authors properly isn't an
option (and sometimes it isn't, there's just too many of them).
When there are XHTML compliant web based WYSIWYG editors out there, then
this is really null and void.

No it isn't. There's a few "WYSIWYG" editors that produce valid
(Transitional) code, but that's a long way from ones that produce well
structured content no matter how little the user knows about HTML
structure.
If they have limited available styles to choose from for text, or other
content, then where's the issue?
That doesn't mean they'll necessarily pick the right style for the
content. I know of no editor [1] that stops someone doing
<h1>Welcome to this site</h1>
<h4>Have a nice day</h4>
<h3>About the site</h3>
<p>This site is ...

Unless, of course, you stop them using headings at all, and then you
mess up the structure even more.
They can only add content within the defined parameters of the CSS
styles you set up!

What have CSS styles got to do with this? HTML structure is the issue,
not what decoration gets put on top (though careful use of CSS styling
can make it easier to encourage good structure [2]).

[1] And if you have an example of one, please let me know.
[2] e.g. blockquote { margin-left: 0; padding-left: 0; }

--
Chris

[Rob Collyer]

> ... but that's a long way from ones that produce well

structured content no matter how little the user knows about HTML
structure.

Ok.... well thats still a damn site more structured than some web
designers
produce even with knowledge of HTML.

No solution will be perfect.

If perfection is something you are after, then please tell me when you
find it.
--
Robert Collyer
www.webforumz.com
Free Web Design and Development Help, Discussions, tips and Critique!
ASP, VB, .NET, SQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, XML, SEO !

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Chris Morris wrote:

Rob Collyer <we*******@webforumz.com> writes:

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@ph.gla.ac.uk> wrote in [...]

If the content of the pages has a relatively fixed structure, some
kind of standard template can be useful, into which they pour their
content.

I have to say Alan, that is an extremely negative and pessamistic outlook
you have there.

Accurate, though.

Getting well structured content from people who don't know much
(anything) about HTML structure is difficult, and something I've been
doing a fair bit of work on recently. I'd agree that standard
templates - at the content block as well as the page level - are
probably the way to go if training the authors properly isn't an
option (and sometimes it isn't, there's just too many of them).

Sounds about right to me.

Actually, there was a tool called txt2html by Seth Golub, which I see
is now a sourceforge project, which could do a pretty remarkable job
of guessing at the intended structure of a plaintext file. But surely
not 100% reliable, and the occasional mis-guess could make the result
quite ridiculous, so it sure needed a bit of editorial intervention if
quality was needed in the result.

Indeed, on a couple of occasions (some years back) when I had need to
produce HTML from Word, I found save-As plain text, and passing
through txt2html, produced a much better job than the ridiculous mess
that the then-current Word's "save as HTML" produced. That might have
got a bit better now (as long as you turn off MS's voluminous
round-tripping stuff), but I'm relatively unconvinced...

*However*, neither of them did such a good job as starting from
/appropriate/ Word format (i.e using appropriate named styles instead
of direct formatting), and then using a non-MS tool which converted
the Word (or rather, RTF) into real HTML, taking account of the
structure implied by the appropriate styles.

But teaching someone who for years has used MS Word as an electric
typewriter and thinks that's all there is, to use MS Word properly, is
probably harder than teaching them the basics of HTML. So what *do* I
recommend? If we're talking about primarily textual content, then
perhaps a team of authors typing plain-text content, and an
experienced editor, with appropriate software assist, moulding it into
competent web pages.

h.t.h

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Rob Collyer wrote:

When there are XHTML compliant web based WYSIWYG editors out there, then
this is really null and void.

You don't seem to be listening. What do they see? What do they get?

[Andy Dingley]

"Miguel Orrego" <mi****@stressedmonkey.net-nospam> wrote in message news:<40**********************@reading.news.pipex. net>...

The software would be used by content editors on the company's intranet,

Content editors don't need WYSIWYG. Have them concentrate on editing
_content_, not layout. Have good designers work on it first and give
them good stylesheets, and allow them good preview features while
they're editing the content. A good stylesheet not only looks good,
it's also semantically rich so that content editors merely need to tag
items as "A callout box", and it'll be treated as such.

And review your styles as an ongoing process - otherwise your content
editors _will_ discover evil ways of doing something they can't
currently do, and will start using it. If they want to do something,
support them in this and help them to do it right. Saying that it's

On www.t3.co.uk the content editors wanted a byline after a story,
but they didn't want this as a separate <para>, because that would
cause an ugly (sic) blank line space before it. So instead they took
to embedding the byline inside the last para like this:

<p>My story ...

...in conclusion.
<br /><em>Paul Foot</em></p>

As a result of the project architect not liking a particular feature
(for no good reason), they now have some really bogus markup that
can't be re-styled properly in the future.

[Andreas Prilop]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Rob Collyer wrote:

[ Fullquote snipped ]

I have to say Alan, that is an extremely negative and pessamistic outlook
you have there.

I have to say Rob, that is an extremely negative and useless quoting style
you have there.

Please read
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~wijnands/nnq/nquote.html>
<http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/dont.html>

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

[Neal]

On 20 Jul 2004 12:56:23 +0100, Chris Morris <c.********@durham.ac.uk>
wrote:

I know of no editor [1] that stops someone doing
<h1>Welcome to this site</h1>
<h4>Have a nice day</h4>
<h3>About the site</h3>
<p>This site is ...

Not being a programmer, I would think it would be a trivial matter to have
an option to set to "Warn when heading hierarchy is broken" or something.
The user could set to observe strict hierarchy or disallow consecutive
headings with no content or whatever.

Not being one who uses so-called wysiwyg editors, I cannot offer an
example of one that would.

[Brian]

Miguel Orrego wrote:

The software would be used by content editors on the company's intranet, I
am quite competent in html etc, but the editors won't have time to learn it

As other have said, a template system is what you want. I imagine that
editors might not be able to learn all of HTML, but surely they can be
trained to use <p>, <em>, <strong>, <div>, etc. correctly.

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

[Neal]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 14:23:39 -0400, Brian
<us*****@julietremblay.com.invalid> wrote:

Miguel Orrego wrote:

The software would be used by content editors on the company's
intranet, I
am quite competent in html etc, but the editors won't have time to
learn it

As other have said, a template system is what you want. I imagine that
editors might not be able to learn all of HTML, but surely they can be
trained to use <p>, <em>, <strong>, <div>, etc. correctly.

In fact, it might be best to work it so you generate the page with PHP.
They can write the copy with simple HTML like Brian describes, and save it
appropriately. Then with PHP you pull their content into the actual page.
That way they never even have to deal with the whole HTML document.

[Uncle Pirate]

Rob Collyer wrote:

I have to say Alan, that is an extremely negative and pessamistic outlook
you have there.

Not so. It's simply the way things are. I manage a site that is a
total mess because of what Alan talks about and you apparantly plan to
do. I initially created templates which as time passed, people
corrupted so there are many different looking pages now. Alan was just
trying to keep you from making these same types of mistakes. I am
currently trying to get a committee together to come up with a new
standard layout/design but this time, I want information from the
differing areas of campus, I'll create and maintain the pages myself.
It will be much easier with some of the things I have learned the past
couple of years (HTML and CSS). In some areas that change a lot, I'll
write Perl scripts to dynamically create the pages from text data files
that departments can update.

--
Stan McCann "Uncle Pirate"
Webmaster/Computer Center Manager, NMSU at Alamogordo
Cooordinator, Tularosa Basin Chapter, ABATE of NM AMA#758681
'94 1500 Vulcan (now wrecked) :( http://surecann.com/Dcp_2068c.jpg
A zest for living must include a willingness to die. - R.A. Heinlein

[AES/newspost]

In article <40********@nntp.zianet.com>,
Uncle Pirate <st**@surecann.com> wrote:

currently trying to get a committee together to come up with a new
standard layout/design but this time, I want information from the
differing areas of campus, I'll create and maintain the pages myself.
It will be much easier with some of the things I have learned the past
couple of years (HTML and CSS). In some areas that change a lot, I'll
write Perl scripts to dynamically create the pages from text data files
that departments can update. <<<<<<<<<<<<==========

I'll risk throwing in a quite separate but related thought here -- one
that's admittedly OT in that it relates much more to information content
than to form, and also that comes from someone who's admittedly a lurker
rather than someone really in the trenches on either of these issues.

Over the past decade or so I've watched with interest and amusement as
another large university struggled to adapt to doing a lot of its
academic and business operations online or using online tools or by
putting information on line.

The net result before very long was, and to a fair extent still is, a
monstrous tangle of broken links, missing web pages, an even greater
fraction of totally obsolete web pages, situations where last year's
stuff can be found on line but this year's current stuff can't, and
similar fun situations.

Eventually I've come to think that the fundamental solution for widely
used, intermittently updated university documents and other materials of
all kinds -- policy statements, official calendars, sets of rules and
regulations, committee rosters, committee agendas, committee minutes,
course listings, news releases, whatever, you name it (even certain
databases) -- can never be based on a concept like "text data files that
departments can update", or more generally on documents where the master
copy is in some department's files or some staff member's computer
somewhere, and updates have to be periodically uploaded to a web server
-- it just won't happen with sufficient reliability.

The solution should instead be a core policy that the master copy of
every such document is the (single, sole) copy >>on the web site <<.

That is, there's only _one_ such master copy, and it's the one stored on
one master server. Given appropriate authorization anyone can read this
master copy; point or link to it; print it if you want; or download it
if that's allowed.

Some appropriate office or individual with appropriate and carefully
maintained security clearance is then the only one who modify or upgrade
each such document. But unless and until someone does such an
authorized upgrade to the _web_ copy, only that copy on the master web
site (not even on any mirrors) is, at any instant, the legal master copy.

Are there organizations that operate on this principle, or something
akin to it?

[Lachlan Hunt]

Chris Morris wrote:

Rob Collyer <we*******@webforumz.com> writes:

When there are XHTML compliant web based WYSIWYG editors out there, then
this is really null and void.

No it isn't. There's a few "WYSIWYG" editors that produce valid
(Transitional) code, but that's a long way from ones that produce well
structured content no matter how little the user knows about HTML
structure.

There is XStandard [1], an editor that claims to produce only valid
XHTML 1.0 Strict or 1.1 mark up, and completely removes things like
colour pickers and font selectors from it's interface, and forces the
use of CSS. I haven't used it yet, but I'm going to try it out soon and
see if it's as good as it claims.

[1] http://www.xstandard.com/
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://www.lachy.id.au/

Please direct all spam to abuse@localhost
Thank you.

[Claire Tucker]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 12:04:34 -0400, Neal <ne*****@yahoo.com> wrote:

On 20 Jul 2004 12:56:23 +0100, Chris Morris <c.********@durham.ac.uk>
wrote:

I know of no editor [1] that stops someone doing
<h1>Welcome to this site</h1>
<h4>Have a nice day</h4>
<h3>About the site</h3>
<p>This site is ...

Not being a programmer, I would think it would be a trivial matter to have
an option to set to "Warn when heading hierarchy is broken" or something.
The user could set to observe strict hierarchy or disallow consecutive
headings with no content or whatever.

Indeed, I think I'd probably be inclined to dispense completely with
options for "Heading level 1", "Heading level 2" etc and instead have
the UI provide for creating headed, nested sections. Let the software
figure out the heirarchy as it saves.

This has the advantage that you can grab a bunch of sections and move
them around in the document heirarchy and not have to manually
re-number all of the headings.

....but maybe I've just been writing too much DocBook recently. (It has
an unnumbered SECTION element which leaves the processing software to
keep track of the heirarchy)

How to represent nested sections in a word-processor-like interface is
an interesting quandry I won't attempt to answer! (I'm mostly a
programmer, not a UI person.)

Best regards,
-Claire

[Nick Kew]

In article <87************@dinopsis.dur.ac.uk>,
Chris Morris <c.********@durham.ac.uk> writes:

That doesn't mean they'll necessarily pick the right style for the
content. I know of no editor [1] that stops someone doing
<h1>Welcome to this site</h1>
<h4>Have a nice day</h4>
<h3>About the site</h3>
<p>This site is ...

Any DTD-aware editor can do that by using a DTD that enforces the
nesting of headings. So if you use Emacs with ISO/IEC HTML, you
have it.

On a related note, there are other circumstances where you can do
something similar. mod_annot allows users to update a published
document through a browser, and has the option to validate all
updates against a server-admin-supplied per-section DTD, which
I've used to enforce structure.

--
Nick Kew

[Rob Collyer]

AES/newspost <si*****@stanford.edu> wrote in news:siegman-
A6*******************@news.stanford.edu:

In article <40********@nntp.zianet.com>,
Uncle Pirate <st**@surecann.com> wrote:

currently trying to get a committee together to come up with a new
standard layout/design but this time, I want information from the
differing areas of campus, I'll create and maintain the pages myself.
It will be much easier with some of the things I have learned the past
couple of years (HTML and CSS). In some areas that change a lot, I'll
write Perl scripts to dynamically create the pages from text data files that departments can update. <<<<<<<<<<<<==========

I'll risk throwing in a quite separate but related thought here -- one
that's admittedly OT in that it relates much more to information

content than to form, and also that comes from someone who's admittedly a lurker rather than someone really in the trenches on either of these issues.

Over the past decade or so I've watched with interest and amusement as
another large university struggled to adapt to doing a lot of its
academic and business operations online or using online tools or by
putting information on line.

The net result before very long was, and to a fair extent still is, a
monstrous tangle of broken links, missing web pages, an even greater
fraction of totally obsolete web pages, situations where last year's
stuff can be found on line but this year's current stuff can't, and
similar fun situations.

Eventually I've come to think that the fundamental solution for widely
used, intermittently updated university documents and other materials of all kinds -- policy statements, official calendars, sets of rules and
regulations, committee rosters, committee agendas, committee minutes,
course listings, news releases, whatever, you name it (even certain
databases) -- can never be based on a concept like "text data files that departments can update", or more generally on documents where the master copy is in some department's files or some staff member's computer
somewhere, and updates have to be periodically uploaded to a web server
-- it just won't happen with sufficient reliability.

The solution should instead be a core policy that the master copy of
every such document is the (single, sole) copy >>on the web site <<.

That is, there's only _one_ such master copy, and it's the one stored on one master server. Given appropriate authorization anyone can read this master copy; point or link to it; print it if you want; or download it
if that's allowed.

Some appropriate office or individual with appropriate and carefully
maintained security clearance is then the only one who modify or upgrade each such document. But unless and until someone does such an
authorized upgrade to the _web_ copy, only that copy on the master web
site (not even on any mirrors) is, at any instant, the legal master copy.
Are there organizations that operate on this principle, or something
akin to it?

That would make the most sense....

I've always stored content in databases... the look is the only thing
that is not stored there.

I just thought (without even thinking) this is the way most people do it,
and surely is the most logical way. It also makes searching a hell of a
lot quicker as it does not involve the file-system.

--
Robert Collyer
www.webforumz.com
Free Web Design and Development Help, Discussions, tips and Critique!
ASP, VB, .NET, SQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, XML, SEO !

[Rob Collyer]

Lachlan Hunt <la**********@lachy.id.au.invalid> wrote in
news:QQ*****************@news-server.bigpond.net.au:

Chris Morris wrote:

Rob Collyer <we*******@webforumz.com> writes:

When there are XHTML compliant web based WYSIWYG editors out there,
then this is really null and void.

No it isn't. There's a few "WYSIWYG" editors that produce valid
(Transitional) code, but that's a long way from ones that produce
well structured content no matter how little the user knows about
HTML structure.

There is XStandard [1], an editor that claims to produce only valid
XHTML 1.0 Strict or 1.1 mark up, and completely removes things like
colour pickers and font selectors from it's interface, and forces the
use of CSS. I haven't used it yet, but I'm going to try it out soon
and see if it's as good as it claims.

[1] http://www.xstandard.com/

This was indeed the editor I had in mind (I forgot the name... so thanks)

--
Robert Collyer
www.webforumz.com
Free Web Design and Development Help, Discussions, tips and Critique!
ASP, VB, .NET, SQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, XML, SEO !

[Claire Tucker]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 02:49:20 GMT, Lachlan Hunt
<la**********@lachy.id.au.invalid> wrote:

There is XStandard [1], an editor that claims to produce only valid
XHTML 1.0 Strict or 1.1 mark up, and completely removes things like
colour pickers and font selectors from it's interface, and forces the
use of CSS. I haven't used it yet, but I'm going to try it out soon and
see if it's as good as it claims.

[1] http://www.xstandard.com/

Wow. In order to download the software, I must first submit my email
address by HTTP so that they can send me a URL by email so that I can
copy and paste it into my browser and finally retrieve the file by
HTTP.

That's incredibly user-hostile and inefficient. Where do people get
these stupid ideas?

(...and why on earth do they want my email address anyway? I can think
of nothing they could do with it that I would actually *want* them to
do.)

-Claire

[Michael Rozdoba]

Uncle Pirate wrote:

In some areas that change a lot, I'll
write Perl scripts to dynamically create the pages from text data files
that departments can update.

I'm soon to start on my first real website (by which I mean something
other than a purely academic project or vanity publishing) & need to
allow the charity concerned to be able to update parts of the content in
the future - they're very non-technical (as in, wouldn't know what a
browser was; don't realise tools other than IE exist to perform the same
function & so on; use Word as a typewriter... ;).

Bearing in mind the pitfalls, I've decided on doing something like the
above with Perl or PHP. I was just wondering how workable this was
considered as a solution, when I read this thread :)

I don't suppose anyone here is aware of any reference material on this
approach? I imagine I'll start from scratch, whatever, but if there is
anything worth reading on the subject I'll check it out. Thanks.

--
Michael
m r o z a t u k g a t e w a y d o t n e t