[news.eclipse.webtools] Re: Extend the XML of SSE or Write a new one?

[Nitin Dahyabhai <nitind@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Khoa Nguyen wrote:
> I'm going to write a new structured text editor for a programming 
> language which is based on XML:
> - It is XML but it doesn't have to be well-formed. Unescaped characters 
> (<, >, &...) may appear at any place!!!
> - It doesn't contain meta entries such as DTD, Schema...
>
> After doing some research, I found that the SSE in WST would be a good 
> starting point for this kind of editor. However, if I implement this 
> editor by extending XML/SSE editor via extension points, I will have to 
> modify some of features of XML/SSE which seems to be very intricate:
> - Remove several actions (e.g: Add DTD..) in the outline-view.
> - The validation should be rewritten to allow unescaped characters.
> - Remove some inapplicable suggestions from content assists.
> - ...
>
> Sadly, although SSE/WST has been around for several years, the documents 
> (programmer's guide) are only partial. I don't know if those 
> modifications could be done with the current XML/SSE editor? Or if it is 
> so complicated, should I write a new editor which extends SSE directly 
> and use XML/SSE partially?
>
> Any comments are appreciated.

It's a tricky thing to support (instead of just tolerating) a 
variant of the regular syntax, enough that it might warrant a new 
implementation (or a modified version of the existing one).  Even 
the un-escaped characters would be an issue as our XML parser relies 
on the '<' to tell it when a tag is beginning, and our batch 
validator, as a wrapper around Xerces, would have to be rewritten. 
Additionally most of the UI in Eclipse is written for contributions, 
not for removals.

Is it something that can't have references to a DTD or XML Schema? 
Is it actually more like HTML, then?

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Nitin Dahyabhai
Eclipse WTP Source Editing
IBM Rational