h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just started a feasibility study to look at the possibility of a WYSIWYG editor. I've decided to call it GuideDog. It uses some little-known about functionality in IE 5.5 to render and edit XML. Anyone interested?

FM

Yes that sounds interesting, I've nearly finished the Alabaster on my preview program. How are you planning to do it?

I'm currently using some XSL style sheets put together by Frankie Roberto to convert the GuideML into XHTML. After this, I load the XHTML into a WebBrowser control hosted in a VB application. This is then connected up to several objects which sink the events raised by the control when the user does various things to it. I've got the beastie to load a document and I can edit it in a very basic fashion (cut, paste, delete, type) so far. I now have to detect formatting regions so I can set the formatting toolbars accordingly.
I have 2 CSS style sheets from Frankie atm: goo and alabaster, and I pass the name of these as a parameter to the Microsoft MSXML parser. This means that when the parser processes the stylesheet and the document, it loads up the CSS dynamically. I am about to start t
o rite the routine to parse the IE5.5 Document Object Model and convert it back to GuideML.
When I have done this, I should be able to save the file back to disk and re-import ir, allowing me to change styles on the fly.

that's odd, that's very similar to what mine does!
Except I couldn't be bothered to use XSL style sheets, so I've managed to code the tags HTML using VB. Everytime the text changes, the MSXML reader reads the code, and parses it using events I've set up myself. It then saves the file and previews it!

Hi Jonny,
I'm not sure I understand the objectives of your project. Are you writing a *previewer* or an *editor*? I'm writing a fully-fledged Word-styled Editor, which converts the GuideMl to HTML, allows it to be edited, then converts it back again. I notice that you have some experience of C++ (which is more than mine, which is zero). C++ allows you to hack the MSHTML editor and produce an 'edit designer', so any help would be appreciated as this means we can customize the editor until the cows come home.
You'd think at my age I'd be old enough to know better than to try and take on a project like this. I do these things because I like solving problems, and this is a big problem that remains unresolved for a while now. I *do* know better, so I'm asking for any help that might be available. You can email me from my Personal Space.

All the best
The FM

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