[WEB4LIB] xhtml compliant WYSIWYG editor

Wed Jan 12 12:55:38 EST 2005

Some facts and opinions I hope are a help.  I'm in a rush so I come off
sounding rather doctrinaire.  I just mean to make some quick points I
think you should consider.

XHTML Transitional does not prohibit 'font' tags.  It is meant to be
compatible with certain older coding practices and newer ones using CSS.
It is XHTML Strict that eliminates 'font' tags and other presentational
tags and attributes, in favor of the CSS mechanisms.  Existing pages
_should_ be converted to transitional code and newly created pages
_should_ be coded as strict code, although there are still cases (mostly
using applets and multimedia) when you must violate standards to get
things to work in browsers.

A good CMS should be reliably generating code that fits your site.  Since
your system is home-grown, its creators should be made aware of the issues
you're facing.  The template designers should create the basic code for
the site and content contributors should be essentially filling in forms
without worrying about HTML at all.  Apply any pressure you can to get
this right, otherwise, why bother with a CMS?  Template designers or
content contributers that can't get things like accessibility issues right
are just causing you new troubles down the line.

For WYSIWYG editing you probably want either Macromedia Dreamweaver or
Contribute.  For use with a homegrown CMS, Contribute might be sufficient.
Dreamweaver lets you view the created code and edit it directly, which
Contribute does not allow.  But a WYSIWYG editor can't protect you from
needing to know and understand HTML if you are working with CSS.

However, IMHO, the only way to get the code right is to write the code.
There is no substitute for viewing resulting pages in several different
browsers especially if you're using CSS.  An excellent, free,
standards-compliant editor worth looking at is HTML-Kit
<http://www.chami.com/html-kit/>.  It is not WYSIWYG, but it does make it
convenient to see the results of your work quickly.

Chris Gray
Library Systems
University of Waterloo

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Leslie Hassett wrote:

>
> First, let me say I appreciate this list and all the expertise represented
> here.
>
> I'm wondering if anyone knows of a "bug free" WYSIWYG editor that creates
> xhtml compliant code which could be integrated into a "homegrown" CMS. The
> CMS was created by our campus IT department and uses php. We are going thru
> a website redesign that is using stylesheets and xhtml 1.0 transitional (so
> we say!)
>
> I'm concerned that WYSIWYG editor currently in the CMS (purchased
> separately) allows non-compliant code, for example creating font tags, even
> placing those font tags inside a header tag.  It's not clear to me whether
> the CMS itself will be able to clean this up. If it doesn't, our documents
> will not be what we say they are in the declaration statement which is:
>
>
> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
> "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
>
>
>
> I am a reference librarian on the outside of this development process,
> although I am one of the primary content editors and am one of the first
> users of the CMS.  I try to keep current on HTML/XHTML/XML issues, however,
> I still consider myself mostly a novice.  Normally, I only lurk on this list
> to listen to what the real experts discuss but I'd really like to suggest to
> our IT department an XHTML WYSIWYG editor to make sure our pages have
> compliant code.  Department secretaries and other staff who have no HTML
> knowledge will be using this to enter their pages in the CMS.
>
> If anyone can help with this I'd appreciate it.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Leslie Hassett, Reference Librarian
> lhassett at dwebb.llu.edu
> (909)558-4300 ext. 47513
>
>
>
>
>