You should write a book, vous
The last day of last year, I stopped thinking, "I should write a book," and began writing the book. It is about nothing in particular unless the subject of me is something in particular. Time will tell if its worth reading after its been written. No harm in getting started.
How? I could write it in Microsoft Word but I've found Word to be cumbersome on very large documents. Besides that, I want to write it in a format the is incredibly easy to rearrange and restructure. My brain doesn't work linearly, neither does my life. Since at different times, I may wish to write about diffecrent times, I may, at a later time, decide to change the order of things. That's a bit tricky in an unstructured document.
docBook
A structured document, such as xml, would be ideal. I found an XML standard called docBook that is exactly what I want. I'm trying to find a docBook editor, like MS Word, that will allow me to write naturally, and store the content as docBook compliant Xml. Even better, I want a web-based solution that I can use anytime I have an internet connection from any computer! I want the Google solution - everything on the server. One step at a time....
docBook in MS Word
To start, I thought I'd give it a try in Word. I created a new Xml Document. I noticed the right pane indicated I could use a schema. I had just downloaded the shema for docBook, so I gave the a try.
Nifty!
Word loads the schema and provides contextual selections based on you place in the document. Book is the first tag. You can select items and click a tag and Wod will wrap your selection with that tag. I like the interface as well, its less cluttered then traditional xml tags. For this xml to worth a dang, make sure to click "Xml Options" and check "Save data only". If you don't, you'll get all the garbage Word uses for formatting.
Altova Authentic
The next thing I tried was Altova Authentic. I downloaded the desktop and the browser versions. I tried to set up the browser version but there is this proprietary thing called an SPSData stylesheet needed and I can't find the dang thing anywhere. Its authored using their StyleVision product. Frantly, I don't want to have to create some special stylesheet thing for this, I just want to have rich support for an xmlSchema. Altova makes XmlSpy as well. Since this is considered the de-facto standard xml editor, I won't give up on them quite yet. I installed the desktop version and, viola, there were those elusive SPS documents. In fact, there's a docBook template. I didn't quite understand the interface. There's an "add.." link that allows you to add stuff, but what? I'll bet it would make sense to read the manual (RTFM) but I am not inclined right now to learn something non-intuitive, for this purpose. What I want is a simple text editor that supports xml schema in a way similar to Visual Studio. UNtil they respond to my inquiries, or I take a minute to review the user guide, I'm giving up on them now.
Visual Studio.net
I then tried referencing the schema in Visual Studio. You do this by creating an Xml Document, right clicking in the text window and selecting "properties"... One of the properties is "Schemas". I found I had to include the schemas in a sub folder in the project for correct consumption but as soon as I did that, WOW! I think VS just took the cake. This is exactly the sor tof intelligence I am looking for. Unfortunately, not easily web-enabled. Its not a dotnet executable, either, so no reflector for quick cheats.
Custom
Looks like I may have to write some xpath against the schema and provide my own intellisense. I really want to keep it simple. All I want is a internet accessible place to add chapters, paragraphs, etc. I'm sure there is something out there, I just haven't found it yet.
I'll be continuing on the subject of this post as I learn more.