Re: Fwd: Re: Comparative review of XML editors

On Sun, 2005-04-24 at 22:48 +0200, Sean Wheller wrote:
> trying again.
> 
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> 
> Subject: Re: Comparative review of XML editors
> Date: Sunday 24 April 2005 22:35
> From: Sean Wheller <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> 
> On Sunday 24 April 2005 18:54, Steinar Bang wrote:
> > >>>>> Sean Wheller <[email protected]>:
> > >
> > > On Wednesday 20 April 2005 20:41, David Malcolm wrote:
> > >> Alas, Conglomerate doesn't get a mention
> > >
> > > Mainly because people feel conglomerate is hectic and lost its way.
> >
> > Er... in what way?
> >
> > In my view, conglomerate is the most promising document oriented XML
> > editor around.  
> 
> In my contributions to the documentation efforts of several distributions, in
> particular those where GNOME is the default desktop environment, I have had
> interaction with authors who seek a better alternative to editing XML
> documents in source view editors such as VIM or emacs. My suggestion for
> these users has been to move in the direction of WYSIOO structured editors
> such as Morphon XML or XMLmind. Mainly because they are none technical people
> and just want an easy way to write and contribute documents to their favorite
> distro but find the barrier to entry high.

Thanks for writing this.  These people (and you) are very much our
target users, and it's very useful to have this kind of input.

Many of the specific points below stem from Conglomerate not being
finished.  These days I only get to hack on it occasionally; we badly
need more programmers involved.  By "finished" I mean that we need to
get a stable release, by which I mean one that doesn't crash (or is very
hard to); we then need to optimise it so it runs at a decent speed.

Do we need a warning/disclaimer on the website to give a better
indication of the unfinished state?

> 
> On many occasions I have recommended the the use of Conglomerate. The
> responses, after trying it, have always come back in favor of XMLmind.
> Statements I have received during IRC discussions with regard to Conglomerate
> have included some trivial and some major issues:
> * to slow in opening documents
Needs optimisation, but needs bugfixing first :-(

> * over complicates the editing process
> * too many boxes and colors between text distracts me from writing
Yeah.  Suggestions for improvements welcome.  Maybe we should take this
to the GNOME usability-list?

> * conglomerate crashes for no apparent reason losing work, it did it twice
>  and I decided to give it a miss
Unstable, alas.

> * its the most stupid app, close and quit both terminate the application when
> all I wanted to do was close the current document
I wasn't aware of that bug; please bugzilla it.

> I don't like the way I have to open dialogs in order to view or edit
> attributes.
Having an embedded (docked) editor has been suggested.  Sounds like we
should up the priority for that one.

> * it does not support basic stuff like entities and we use xinclude and
> xpointer so I can't even read the whole document
Please can you write a description of the features you want, and how
they ought to work; ideally please file them in bugzilla so we can start
working on them.

> * validation is bad on complex documents
Do you mean that validation is wrong, or that the feature isn't usable
enough (or both?).


> * tried installing but failed, need to install to many things just to get an
> editor working
(I started to answer this below)
> 
> I can't remember all the comments I have had, but people see the editor as
> crippled and poorly designed with little functionality or support for basic
> things. In this view they see it as a poor choice when you have alternatives
> like XMLmind to use.
> 
> Oh yes, one person remarked that the web site was unhelpful and that they saw
Can you clarify what was meant by "the web site was unhelpful" please?

> I had written the help, but that it was mostly empty. They ask if I will be
> finishing the document. Puts me in a sticky situation and I have to explain
> the essence of what I am about to tell you next. Just not is so many words
> and not as forthright.
> 
> From my own experience I can say that I agree with their feelings. In
> addition, back when I planned documenting the editor. I found that, with the
> exception of a few, that people were insensitive and unsupportive of new
> people joining the project and voicing their ideas and problems. Often to the
> point where the views of others where over showed by the religious focus of
> certain members. Often very valid user input and points where totally
> disregarded.  Responses to questions often seemed more like an effort to
> prove a persons technical ability and knowledge that trying to help a person
> understand or solve an issue. Contribution to the project became an argument
> and there was no more fun left.

I'm sorry that you had those experiences.  We badly need more
contributors, and we need everyone to have fun doing this (including
me!).

> 
> In a recent effort to try and understand the problems a user who had
>  installed Conglomerate and was speaking about. Since I had not touched the
>  program in some time, I tried installing the latest release on SuSE 9.2 and
>  was met by the following error
> conglomerate.rpm install failed
> rpm output:
> /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.26168: line 2: gconftool-2: command not found
> error: %post(conglomerate-0.9.0-1.1.fc2.rf) scriptlet failed, exit status 127

The "fc2" in this line looks like it might be the problem; it look like
you were either installing a package from Fedora Extras, or upgrading on
top of one from Fedora Extras.  Where did you get the RPM from?

> 
> I did not bother continuing. Firstly I was scared to ask for help for fear of
> being abused on the list because of my ignorance and second because I don't
> need gconftool for anything else. My main desktop is KDE, I have installed
> numerous GNOME apps and have yet to be required to install gconftool.
> everything GNOME installed on my box, "just works" afer installation.

It sounds like SuSE package things in a way different to what I expect.
Note that the tool is called "gconftool-2"; this is a standard thing
that comes with GConf (specifically it's part of the "GConf2" package on
Fedora, and I had expected it to be present on every distro.  I don't
know how SuSE do it).  Most GNOME apps use GConf, so I'd expect you
already have the main part of GConf installed.

Ironically, Conglomerate won't be badly affected if that command fails.

Anyway, these are details.  The main point is that you were discouraged
from asking these questions on the mailing list.  That's a bad situation
for us to be in, and potentially fatal to us as a project.  I don't want
to start namecalling.  Please can everyone ensure that whenever they
write emails to the Conglomerate lists that they try to be as polite as
possible, and accept that different people have different areas and
levels of expertise?  I want this to be a fun place where people enjoy
participating.  If we haven't got that then I'm not sure I want to
participate either.

> 
> Please, I realize that my comments and input here may offend and anger
>  certain people. I ask that you take my input and commnets as constructive
>  input. I do not mean to be derogitory or demeaning to any person, I am just
>  trying to give you a perspective of a person looking in to conglomerate as a
>  project from the outside.

Thanks again for your comments; it's really useful.  Please bear with
us.

Dave Malcolm