EMACS as an xml editor

Submitted by admin on Mon, 09/05/2011 - 01:21

If you do a lot of xml and or xhtml editing, consider EMACS as your first choice xml editor.

EMACS is a very powerful text editor created by Richard Stallman several years ago. It was greatly appreciated by developers for its power and flexibility. In the last ten years, the advent of advanced IDEs (complex environments for developing programs) has obfuscated the fame of EMACS, and currently the number fo developers working on EMACS is not that huge.

Anyway, if you are a copy-editor, EMACS could be a very interesting tool for you. EMACS can make your life easier. Yes you don't see what you get (emacs is not a WYSIWYG editor), but you can do a very fast and effective xml and or xhtml editing.

I would like to highlights two advantages of using EMACS:

  • very fast editing with extremely powerful keyboard shortcuts
  • xml real time validation (particurlarly important with docbook and dita documents) 
 
EMACS has a vary easy tutorial inside the program itself, and lots (tons) of documents are available on the web.
There is a great amount of very useful documentation about the nxml-mode (the mode for xml). Visit the official EMACS website and for nxml-mode thaiopensource is a good starting point.
So, install EMACS (supported by linux, mac and windows) version 23 or greater. activate nxml-mode (command: M-X nxml-mode), chose the validation schema, and enjoy.
  
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