DOCBOOK-APPS: ID/IDREF browsing

[Michael Smith <smith at xml-doc dot org>]

In working with <xref> and other such elements that have required
IDREF attributes (e.g. linkend), I find to be really annoying that
most editing applications require me to manually type in the value of
the ID I want to link to. It seems to me that any validating editor
should maintain a list of the IDs, and let me browse/choose from it.

Is anyone on the list aware of any editing applications that provide
support for this type of ID/IDREF browsing or completion?

I know of only two applications that do -- epcEdit and Thierry
Machicoane's XMLware. Here are screenshots of the <xref> example from
"DocBook: The Definitive Guide" (page 522) loaded up in each:

  epcEdit:   http://www.logopoeia.com/images/idrefBrowseEpcEdit.png

  XMLware:   http://www.logopoeia.com/images/idrefBrowseXMLware.png

For more information about epcEdit and XMLware, see:

  epcEdit:   http://www.tksgml.de
  XMLware:   http://homepages.go.com/homepages/m/u/s/mustcorp/

Most (maybe all?) of the current higher-end commercial editors don't
seem to provide an ID/IDREF browsing feature.

Emacs/psgml also doesn't provide it, though it seems like something
that could be built in without too much additional coding.

Emacs would just need to look through the current buffer for all ID
attributes, build a list, and then make it available so that when you
are prompted for a value for the linkend attribute or whatever, you
just hit TAB to get a list of all the possible completions.

For the GUI, it would just be submenu that appears when you insert the
<xref> element or any other with a required IDREF-type attribute.

  --Mike Smith

-- 
Michael Smith          mailto:smith@xml-doc.org
XML-Doc                http://www.xml-doc.org/