...words from the other side...

Hi All BXE Fans,

here is a Xopus developer...

Once in a while I can't resist temptation so I sneek in and start
reading the BXE-dev archive.
Today was such a day.

And it was a day full of surprises... That is why I decided to subscribe
and add my opinion to this IE discussion you are having.

I also would like to make some differences clear between BXE and Xopus.
At OSCOM II I got the impression people still don't see the differences.
I think it is important people know what they 'buy' before they 'buy'
it.

My apologies if someone takes offense at this e-mail. It is my opinion
and I am happy to defend it.

Please read on...

>But i had a nice chat with Bob Clary and he is very interested in
>maintaining and updating his xb scripts, which provide cool
>cross-browser stuff (But I'm still wondering if MS will someday provide
>decent DOM2 support in their browsers..) and which shed some light on
my
>porting worries :)
>
>chregu

IE7 supporting DOM2 shouldn't be the end of your porting worries.

I have studied the BXE code a little and as far as I can tell you are
sending a mix of XML and (X)HTML to the browser.
You also claim to be a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG means What You See Is
What You Get.

Well, unless I am very dearly mistaken, a mix of XML and (X)HTML isn't
what you get when you look at a website. On a website you will get HTML.
So, a WYSIWYG editor should send HTML to the browser, because that is
what you get and that is what you should see.

In my opinion BXE is at the very fundamental level NOT WYSIWYG. Beacuse
what you are sending to the browser for editing purposes differs on a
fundamental scale from what you would publish on the web.
Using BXE you will always need 2 completely different XSLTs and probably
two completely different CSSs.
As a consequence the editing presentation and the publishing
presentation will in many cases not look the same.

Just to explain the differences with Xopus: Xopus can handle (almost)
any XSLT that produces valid (X)HTML for output. No proprietary codes,
no special constructs.

> History tells that proprietery products often don't really adhere to 
> standards, allthough we are told by the PR people that they do.
Inherently, 
> OSS projects are standards compliant, if we are told so.
>
> Sandro

Even OS products often don't adhere to standards.

In my opinion BXE abuses standards to make people think they support
them.

Recently BXE added Schema support. BXE's Schema support at this moment
has nothing to do with schema!
If you look at their demo-schema you will see stuff like minOccurs="1",
please change that to minOccurs="whatever you like". BXE will still run.
because it doesn't care!

All BXE cares about in a schema is the nesting of elements and the
annotation!

This is a clear case of standard-abuse! Make it LOOK like standards
support, present it as standards support, but in reality you just
support Schema SYNTAX and code your own proprietary structure-logic into
it.

BXE also supports XSLT. But not standard XSLT. You cannot use any XSLT
that you would normally use for transforming XML to (X)HTML. If it were
a subset, that would be fine. But there are (as far as I could tell) all
kinds of rules you have to adhere to. You have to put in special code,
structure it in a certain way...
The fact that an editor USES xslt does not mean it supports it.

So, my point is, in answer to Sandro's remark that proprietary products
normally do not support standards very well: I think OS products often
pretend they support standards, while in the meantime they are using
some proprietary stuff.

Again about the difference with Xopus: Xopus supports pure standards.
Sometimes a subset (like in the Schema case), but we never rely on
proprietary extensions. We do have extensions, but the editor does not
need them nor does it rely on them.

> My point of view is, that it is wasted time to get BXE working on MSIE
>= 6 
> and resources should better be concentrated on Mozilla. I don't see
that BXE 
> will be used to enter your login data or to add a forum message, hence

> non-adminstrative users will not get in touch with BXE, but still
basically 
> use HTML forms. BXE will rather be used by content administrators who
are 
> told to download and install Mozilla to get their job done.
>
> Sandro

If that is your opinion, then why make it WYSIWYG? Tell those content
administrators not to mind and work with forms.

I, as does BitFlux I think, do think that BXE and Xopus are for everyone
to use!
They should be so reliable, fast, pretty and generally pleasant that
everyone could and should use them.
Now I know for sure that we, Xopus, aren't there yet. This goal we have
set proves very hard to reach. But then we have a very ambitious goal.

Of course I don't think an editor that only works in Mozilla is even
worth considering to be user-friendly. If you shut out 94% of all users,
then you can hardly call that user-friendly, can you?

The difference thing  again: Xopus works on both IE5.5 and up on Windows
and Mozilla 1.0 and up on any platform. Although I must admit that we do
not actively keep Mozilla support up to date since we do not have any
financers that will pay us to do so. Still until today Xopus at least
starts in Mozilla. And at the Netscape presentation a week ago all
looked reasonably well.

> To me it seems like way too much effort to have a well done WYSIWYG
XML editor 
> that works on MSIE6 and Mozilla. Furthermore, other OSS integrated in
Mozilla 
>
> Sandro

I know of one! And it was hardly any work at all.
We started designing for IE only! We just used the standards that IE
supports and with a little help (we spend about one man one week) we got
it running in Mozilla (not 100% admittedly, but still it runs).

The problem with BXE is its architecture and its code and its
'ausgangspunkt'. You are using XML in the browser, almost no browser is
supporting this. Yet you wanted to build a WYSIWYG editor from the
start. You should have considered the fact that WYSIWYG is only possible
if you present the way you publish. You shouldn't build a WYSIWYG XML
editor using XSLT in Java, because Java isn't HTML. So how can you ever
get it WYSIWYG.

A port from the current BXE architecture to any normal IE version would
mean a complete redo. That is my opinion. Please correct me if I am
wrong.

> will proliferate in the future, because if you want to do it the Open
Source 
> way, you rather rely on Open Source Software - and so should BXE. Not
because 
> of all the GNU "it's about freedom" philosophy, rather because the BXE

> project will only then have a firm basis to grow.
>
> Sandro

To me this is bullshit. excusez le mot.
It sounds almost religous. If you want your product to be used, make
sure people can use it.
Don't start building your product on a browser that isn't even out of
beta, that has a market share of 1%, and in no case make your code so it
will be hard to port to other browsers.

BXE made all of these mistakes and I don't understand why. I really
think Christian is a great programmer. I don't understand how he can
keep it up with it all, being the only programmer in BitFlux and having
to develop a CMS (why?), an editor, a PowerPoint-replacement (another
WHY?). So why these mistakes? Please tell me.


>I just did some tests on MSIE6 and its dom/js implementation and I have
>to say it just sucks compared to Mozilla :(
>
>- getElementByTagNameNS et al. is not implemented
>
>chregu

Because there are no namespaces in HTML.

>- importNode is not implemented
>
>chregu

Because you don't need it, you can use outerHTML/innerHTML or just
create nodes.

>- prototyping is not that advanced as in Mozilla. I was not able to
>specify setters/getters and even worse, I couldn't add methods to the
>Document resp. Element prototypes...
>
>chregu

This can be handy, but why should you want to extend the DOM? Use the
stuff that is available and use it well and you will have all you need.


IE6 does not suck compared to Mozilla.

IE6 is a great HTML browser. It does support not viewing XML inside
except for XML islands, but if you know this, it is great.

You can complain about IE as much as you want, but in the end it really
is the best browser at this moment.
Its support for XML/XSLT/Schema is better than Mozilla's. Its DHTML
engine is faster. Don't tell me otherwise! DHTML Is faster in IE.
Period. Animations are way better, opacity is far better, you can use
special filters to rotate text, if you want.
You have CONTENTEDITABLE! And that for almost 3 years now! While Mozilla
is now still working on it, and thinking of supporting emoticons in
it!!!

So don't tell me IE6 sucks!

The only thing that sucks in IE is its debugger. Mozilla's is very good!



Hello, someone left? Is someone still reading this?

The conclusion.

As you can tell I'm a bit frustrated.
Despite the fact that BitFlux 'copied' all general editor ideas from
Xopus 1 when they started building BXE, we from Q42 have build an XML
editor that is far superior to theirs.
Yet the market does not recognize this as good as they should. Thanks to
Rogers excellent (and I do mean this) work in marketing BXE.
We were very disappointed when the university of Zurich decided in favor
of BXE, I admit, but we were also concerned whether the university knew
what trouble it would find on its path by choosing an editor that does
not support standards, forcing them to change all their XML, XSLT and
Schema into some proprietary form, making it hard to change if needed.
Choosing also for an editor that only runs on 6% of all PCs world wide.
I know they needed Mac support and I know Xopus on top of Mozilla Mac
hadn't proven itself, but did the university know that a port of BXE to
IE would be almost impossible?

As for open source.
So now we have two competing XML editors in the Open Source Space. Is
this good for 'the industry'? I don't think so. People are distracted,
confused and disoriented about what editor to choose/support/finance.

Can we work together then? I don't think so. The two products are so
different at the coding level that there is no way they could ever
integrate.

So what is left is competing and dividing. Dividing the OS Space that
needs unity. Competing for finances that are too sparse anyway.

!good



...if this isn't flame bait i don't know what is...

One more word. I do like the BitFlux guys. I do think they have done a
remarkably good job. I don't however think they should have done it in
the first place. And I don't think people would benefit from choosing
their editor compared to ours.

One final word...
I did not intend to offend anyone...
I just want to start a meaningful, yet animated, discussion...

groetjes Lon, Q42


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Q42: http://www.q42.nl
 
Xopus: http://xopus.org
Xopus Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xopus
 
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