XML highlighting

First of all, well done! FCKeditor is a fine project and I do think that it is quite a feat you and your fellow developers have achieved in creating this application. Again, well done and keep up the good work.

My personal interest in your application has to do with a desire to edit XML files online but with syntax highlighting. I found one application, by Xopus, but this is a commercial application that well exceeded my budget. The other one I found is called BitFlux, it promisses XML support but this is mozilla and FireFox only. This will not work for me and the intended usergroup I have in mind either.

My question therefor is: is FCKeditor the right platform for creating colour coded syntax editor for XML documents?

Any help, links or insights are appreciated. If this application I look for already exists, please say so and I won't bother anyone here.

As ever,

Anne

Tue, 01/03/2006 - 13:13

alfonsoml

Joined: 31/12/2006

Posts: 3737

RE: XML highlighting

Maybe other people around here can give you another point of view, but I don't see that as an easy task. You'll need to do the syntax coloring by yourself, also you'll need to do any syntax validation to ensure that the content is valid XML, ok, that part maybe can be done by the browser but it will probably only say yes or no.

If the only problem to use BitFlux is that it works with Firefox, I would reconsider that option. On one side you can try to understand why it doesn't work in IE and maybe you can find some problems that make editing XML in IE harder than in Firefox. And really: firefox is currently a browser much more interesting than IE

I'm sorry for not being more useful.

Tue, 01/03/2006 - 13:30

kootstra

Joined: 03/01/2006

Posts: 3

RE: XML highlighting

Well, I never thought it would be easy. Perhaps it is indeed easier to continue the IE development of BitFlux. In any case I'd have to develop the colour coding myself in that case too. (just figured that out).

If I were to develop the colour coding myself in FCK editor and forgoing the syntax validation for now, where would I start. Which files? Does anyone have any ideas?

As ever,

Anne

Wed, 01/04/2006 - 07:04

alfonsoml

Joined: 31/12/2006

Posts: 3737

RE: XML highlighting

You can start writting your code as a plugin, I don't see a nice way to do syntax coloring because it would mean to continuosly rewrite the html code as soon as the code changes.

Almost all of the features of FCKeditor would be useless to you if I'm not mistaken: you don't want your users to change fonts, colors, add images, etc...

You can try to see if any other HMTL editor has syntax highlighting when switched to source mode and try to see there what it's needed.

Thu, 01/05/2006 - 12:57

kootstra

Joined: 03/01/2006

Posts: 3

RE: XML highlighting

Over the last couple of days I extended my search, because I simply didn't want to believe that there was nothing notable around. This search paid off since I ended up with a project that has promise and something that may be of some interest to the people using and developing FCKeditor.

The first one is a project called Helene: http://helene.muze.nl. It's an online PHP/Smarty editor. Though crude, it's development is further then any other syntax highlighting project in JavaScript that I'm aware of.

The main developer behind this project pointed out that there was one project that was quite far along in the support for different scripting languages: http://www.dreamprojections.com/SyntaxHighlighter/. This is a viewer only and works very well with text areas. This is something that may be of some interest to some of you.

Well, at present it seems that I'm going to move away from FCKeditor for my own development. Though I may return, at present the amount of work involved in adapting Helene seems to be less then FCKeditor. So I go the road of least resistance.

As ever,

Anne