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

[Khoa Nguyen <instcode@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nitin Dahyabhai wrote:
> 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?
Thanks for your reply.

Actually, I failed to convince my supervisor to keep the language as 
clean & well-formed as an XML document should be. That's why everything 
is now getting harder and harder.

Yes, you're right. It is more like HTML and I'm reusing HTML/SSE by 
cloning/modify its source code although it's a bad practice in software 
development :(

BTW, do you know how much effort if I follow the above way? Or are there 
any better ways to achieve the same result?

Thanks in advance.

Khoa Nguyen