Coming back to XML publishing after a new year's absence. In 2001, I helped a customer switch from tedious PageMaker work to a DTP system built on Xmetal and XEP, with custom DTD and FO stylesheets. It's time for an update now. Having been away from graphical XML editors for a long while, I can't tell what options there are besides Xmetal on today's market. But I can tell my requirements and hope that some of you will point me right:

  * It must have graphical and source edit views. The graphical view must support various forms of lists, tables, images and so on.
  * It must support DTD schemas.
  * It must support CSS. In particular, the 'display' property and CSS 2 selectors.
  * It must have DTD validation.
  * It must actively prevent grammar errors in the graphical view.

And some less important things:

  * It should offer spell checking in many languages (Swedish in particular).
  * It should be possible to write macros and develop custom forms for input, and connect macros to toolbar buttons or menus.

Another customer is asking for the same, but in a web interface. I'm sceptic. In my view, the strength of a good XML editing environment is (apart from content presentation separation) the ability to customize, by adding macros to speed up common tasks, or validating content. If there *is* an XML editing plugin for web browsers, I bet it's not very customizable. What do you think?

Gustaf