Techniques for Authoring Complex XML Documents

This paper reviews the main innovations of XML and considers their impact on the editing techniques for structured documents. Namespaces open the way to compound documents; well-formedness brings more freedom in the editing task; CSS allows style to be associated easily with structured documents. In addition to these innovative features the wide deployment of XML introduces structured documents in many new applications including applications where text is not the dominant content type. In languages such as SVG or SMIL for instance XML is used to represent vector graphics or multimedia presentations. This is a challenging situation for authoring tools. Traditional methods for editing structured documents are not sufficient to address the new requirements. New techniques must be developed or adapted to allow more users to efficiently create advanced XML documents. These techniques include multiple views semantic-driven editing direct manipulation concurrent manipulation of style and structure and integrated multi-language editing. They have been implemented and experimented in the Amaya editor and in some other tools.