MJ Ray wrote:
On 2003-12-07 18:28:54 +0000 Ben Francis ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk wrote:
[...] Where's the incentive for programmers to write programs they don't need but other people do - within the Open Source development model.
Money. Fame. Charity.
OK, point taken.
I don't see the need to type out all the code for a language which translates into visual form quite literally.
It isn't a 1-1 mapping, which is the problem with the pseudo-WYSIWYG tools. People forget it's not 1-1 and do swanky visual effects which work for them and fail for others. I think there are two major improvements that could be made to the current crop of tools:
- multiviews: different basic CSS default settings, so you can see how
the page looks for different readers. Possibly try to emulate the defaults of popular browers and systems with limited CSS support.
Sounds like a good idea, not sure I've seen this done before. This way people can see how the rest of the world is actually probably going to see their web page - possible giving an incentive to use better code. The main reason why people use nasty HTML seems to be that they view it in their own web browser, it looks fine so they assume it will look fine for everyone else.
- refactor: spot common redundant markup and eliminate it. At a simple
level, remove "<b></b>" strings that are common in word-processor-produced code. At a more complex level, do what you said, more like tidy on speed.
This one is an essential, I think.
I'd like someone to extend qemacs to allow xhtml tag input in its graphical editing mode. At the moment, you need both code and display modes (html-mode and xml-mode). It's not bad. I've thrown a screenshot onto gopher://g.towers.org.uk/g/ss.png (9k) (or if you must http://g.towers.org.uk:70/ss.png )
Wish I had the programming skills, this would be a great project to take up/contribute to.
I've also taken a closer look at Amaya, since you said it seems to generate very neat code. I admit, I don't like the interface much either in its current form, but it's by no means the worst I've seen. I like the concept of browsing and editing in the same space. Not sure I'd want to use it for all my browsing though!