GUI for generating XML

Question

Hello.

Does anybody know of GUIs for generating XMLs? This means the user will not be presented with an IDE with support for XML for him to type XML codes. This would be helpful for non-technical people using the system.

I know this sounds easy, given many libraries that can help in generating XMLs. The issue here is that the schema is really that flexible rather than being straightforward like representing books in a library with their properties.

Imagine HTML, where we can create font tags inside a body, a table, a div, or nested even within itself. The solution is a WYSIWYG application that allows user to generate html codes (XML). However, that is good for XML applied in webpages since they involve visual aspect and design. My application of XML would focus on representing some conceptual and computational definitions, much like sql-like syntax, but more than that.

I'm actually after the approach or previous works done or tried, although having a library/working framework for that would be better. Btw, I'm using Java for this project. Currently, I'm just thinking of presenting element tags where user will be able to drag and drop them and nest them with each other. And perhaps, assist them through forms in inputing values for XML attributes. I'm still hoping if there are better ideas from the community.

Thank you.

Answer 1

I know it is sometimes hard for non technical people to get familiar with a tool like eclipse, but it comes with very good and easy to use XML editors. Supporting auto-completion, validation, verification. I am not sure if there is a pre configured eclipse derivate which is focused on xml editing, but you could configure such a thing quite easily.

Answer 2

I looked for this exact thing a couple of months ago. The only one I found was at http://www.jaxfront.org/pages/. It is Java based.

Note that I ended up going with Actipro Software's SyntaxEditor for .NET WinForms which, although does not give me a GUI, gives the app good IntelliSense-like prompting (derived from an underlying XSD) when editing XML.

Answer 3

I think you need to separate the eventual representation (XML) from the abstraction presented to your users. Is your information presented to the user in tree form? If not, do what is convenient for the users and sweat the XML conversion yourself.

There are many tree-based editors that use "meaningful tiles and icons" instead of XML. For example, look at how Eclipse's plug-in editor does the extension of existing points. You get a tree view and can add properties (typically in a separate group box). But you could write a smarter editor that has everything in the tree.

On the other hand, sometimes the XML representation should really be hidden despite its flexibility. A good example is the plugin.xml for Eclipse-plugins. Look at how the editor for that file looks nothing like XML. It is structured logically for the needs of the user, and the code in the background generates the XML.

Answer 4

The W3C answer to your question is XForms. Unfortunately XForms is not directly supported by browsers, although there is a Mozilla plug-in (show and edit even local files, but only in Mozilla). Many XForms solutions are available, an interesting and free one is XSLTForms (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xsltforms/) which translates XForms into HTML Forms (works with every major browser, but local files can only be shown, not edited due to the limitations of Javascript). Also take a look on Altova Authentic.