Re: Advice needed: Text editor with tags.

From: Svenn Are Bjerkem (spam_at_bjerkem.de)
Date: 03/14/04 

Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 22:37:40 +0100

Hi Neil,

I have read your posting with interest.

In article <nem-DE8DE1.19361610032004@larochelle-innovation.com>,
 Neil Madden <nem@cs.nott.ac.uk> wrote:

> Well, on first reading, it sounds like you are after something like
> Docbook. With Docbook, theoretically, you are writing purely the
> content. You add tags to say what different parts of the text *are*, but
> you don't specify in the document how this should be presented in the
> output format. Now, in the world of XML (and Docbookx), you can use an

It is, as you have understood, my intention to write text and care about
what the text represent and not what it looks like. I don't even want to
change font size to indicate a title or section header. Everything is
courier 10 and all formatting is shown to the editor as different colors
on foreground and background. As time pass by he will learn to remember
the different colors. I would also implement a help color chart with
proper keystrokes etc but that is way in the future.

> When you want to create the output (such as PDF), you can run the XML
> through an xsl processor (such as FOP). The problem here is that most of
> the xsl processors don't seem too mature (well, of the free ones I've
> tried), and the resultant PDF is not great quality (especially when
> compared with the output of TeX). Writing an XSL style*** to produce
> your desired formatting is quite a mammoth undertaking, as well. I
> expect that this will improve as time goes on, but at the moment, I
> don't think it's quite there yet. You could, of course, write a
> converter to translate docbook -> latex. Shouldn't be too tricky,
> provided you're not using equations and such (MathML to Latex would be a
> useful tool, but probably quite time consuming to write).

I have studied XML for a while both in Java and Tcl. Of course,
documentation of XML in Java is better than in Tcl and it is even hard
to find out which of TclXML and tDOM I should concentrate on. I have to
come up with a set of tags for the XML file so I can try out in Tcl.

I experimented with XSL a couple of years ago, and I remember that it
was a pain to get right. As the tool is supposed to replace work with
microsoft word I have to keep it very simple and dead on target of
writing modular technical documentation.

>
> As for Tcl/Tk in this context. I don't believe anyone has written such
> an editor. I am working on such a beast, currently entitled ArTcl. At

I was really hoping that it would not be a beast, otherwise I would
already give up...
My thought was to start very simple and then maybe extend features when
my users complain.

One font, say courier 10.
All editing functions in the text widget available.
Using selections to mark text and add tags
Have a window listing all tags active at the cursor.
When a part of a text is selected a checkbox list of tags available to
turn off a tag.

Most text is plain
There will be predefined sections (modular specification for electronic
circuits)
There will be tables with parameters typically
<item>name of parameter</item>
<item>symbol of parameter</item>
<item>condition under which the parameter spec is valid</item>
<item>minimum value</item>
<item>typical value</item>
<item>maximum value</item>
<item>comment to the paramerter</item>

As a chip is designed from many modules, I want to be able to mark some
of the parameters so that they are propagated one level up to the
toplevel specification. I would also want to mark some of the parameters
as variables that can be changed on the toplevel and propagated and
recalculated in the module specifications.

This sound very complex, and it is also if I want to do it with a word
processor like Word. Don't forget that I have to keep a revision track
of all changes because I have to document what is in the chip and not
what is in my head.

The simplest solution that I could find was to use Tcl and tags in a
text widget. The ability to assign as many tags as I need is something I
like with the text widget.

> present, though, it's not much more than a snappy title, and minimal
> code. I add bits here and there, but with the current lack of free time
> I have to devote to it, it's not going to be ready any time soon. I am
> developing a CSS parser in pure Tcl, with a view to creating a
> text-widget drop-in replacement which could be used for editing DOM
> trees (e.g. XML documents) with CSS formatting. At present, this has got
> as far as a scanner, which is mostly complete, but has a few bugs left
> to be worked out, and a few bits could do with being refactored for
> neatness and speed. I can email you that code, if you want something to
> work on, and would like to go in this direction.

I have nothing more than the text widget demo from the standard tcl/tk
distribution and a lot of notes and wishes. I have decided to use XML
and need to understand how I can utilize features in Tcl for XML

>
> Currently, though, I'd say that LaTeX is perhaps your best bet, if you
> are looking for quality printed output (I'm no expert though). You can
> write LaTeX separating content from formatting, but it's a bit more of a
> pain, and so most LaTeX files contain tons of formatting commands. If
> you go this route, you might want to google for LyX, and maybe also
> TkDVI.
>

I really want to use latex. Problem is that latex is not very much liked
by people not into programming. Engineers can be very conservative and
when they want to use word, there are millions of good reasons against
latex. I have made one module in lyx and I had to abandon it simply
because even I had to spend too much time reading a manual in order to
place a simple table with caption and reference. Typing by hand is too
tedious.

> Another possibility would be to use some simple markup language, and
> hand-roll a script which renders it into the Tk canvas widget. From
> there, you can go to PostScript via Tk's built in capabilities. This
> could actually be a feasible way to go. Check out
> http://wiki.tcl.tk/2741 for some experiments I did in this direction a
> while ago.

Using a canvas was my first idea as I have come to like this widget, but
I will then have to take care of a lot of things that exceed my
programming skills. One of the text widget examples in the demo
triggered my interest and I played around with it for a while with
different colors and formats and came to the conclusion that I would
probably come to a result quicker with text widget than with the canvas.

I use the tkoutliner for my daily work and found its modified wiki could
be something, but again, when I write, I want to concentrate on writing
and not on formatting. I have been trying a lot of outliners and lesson
learned was that too much formatting distracts from the focus on writing
and I waste a lot of time on formatting.

I have lately got some experience with using word and I think with
horror how I should educate the users of my templates how to use the
templates right.

I thought about using Java because I have a nice powerbook to program
on, but I also have tcl/tk. Deployment is a problem. I can use Java
WebStart, but I would have to install a lot of java virtual machines. As
far as I have seen the Starkit can solve my distribution problem. There
are many reasons for using tcl. 

-- 
Svenn