From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michael Smith To: docbook-tools-discuss@sourceware.cygnus.com Subject: ANN: Emacs WYSIWYG CALS table generator Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 22:42:00 -0000 Message-ID: X-SW-Source: 2001-q1/msg00014.html Message-ID: <20010122224200.0o8APS-QOp18cGZESWAIzZeIROxBL7oPNtkHd0lLs4I@z> Just made available: a new release of a WYSIWYG table editor for GNU Emacs and XEmacs, with support added for generating XML source compliant with the OASIS Exchange subset of the CALS table model (used in DocBook and in some other DTDs)[1]. The editor -- v1.5.16 of the Emacs lisp package table.el created by Takaaki (Tak) Ota -- can be dowloaded at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=14137&release_id=21474 Details and screenshots are available at: http://table.sourceforge.net/ Along with the newly added CALS support, other notable features: * can generate HTML 3.2-compliant tables too * also useful for embedding tables in any text document: in comments in code or e-mail, for example -- not just for XML/SGML/HTML * like Emacs itself, can be used even in a non-Windowing/GUI environment (for example, over a Telnet/tty connection) * support for generating LaTeX tables is in the works The table.el site also provides a number of supporting Sourceforge features, including links to table.el mailing lists (for bugs and requests) and an interface for submitting table.el bug reports. But not a CALS or HTML rendering/display engine --------------------------------------------------------------------- Though table.el generates CALS and HTML source, it doesn't render/ display either CALS or HTML tables. Ota considers source rendering out of scope for table.el, and has no plans to ever offer integrated rendering. However, he has said he is very much willing to collaborate with developers working on rendering packages (such as w3 mode for Emacs) and working with them on package interoperablity to enable "round tripping" of tables in Emacs. By the way, though table.el itself contains extensive documentation -- and is easy enough to use that you don't really need the docs much -- I'll be helping to create a Texinfo file for it, so feel free to send comments or suggestions for the documentation to me. --Mike Smith [1] For those familiar with the CALS table model ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The XML source generated by table.el will validate either against the "full" CALS model or the OASIS Exchange XML subset, as described in OASIS Technical Memorandum TR9901:1999: http://www.oasis-open.org/html/tm9901.htm This means that the XML source generated by table.el: * specifies horizontal spans by placing namest="" and nameend="" attributes on elements, instead of elements * never contains elements However, compliant with OASIS Exchange subset, table.el _does_ enable you to specify how many (zero or more) 's of the generated source should be wrapped in a element. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Michael Smith mailto:smith@xml-doc.org xml-doc http://www.xml-doc.org/