Bug 368631

Description Igor Jacy Lino Campista 2012-01-15 19:28:07 EST

After creating a DITA 1.1 "concept" document. It more or less useless to try to author it the Vex way.

1) Document creation wizard, does not suggest a valid filename to the DITA document. DITA spec says, it must be either *.dita or *.xml. 
2) You cannot choose if to use XSD or DTD. Probably XSD is only a recent feature.
3) Opening the test.dita file in another perspective than Vex, would not show critical outline view. -> Editor should always ask, if user would like to switch to the "right" perspective for Vex authoring.

Once you get the right perspective you will get main editor view, the outline view and the properties view.

4)When you try to author, it seems that the user needs to memorize the XSD or DTD  of the target format (in this case DITA), to be able to introduce certain elements. And also know by heart or guess were the CTRL-SPACE will work.

5) No UI element gives a structure overview of the document. Not the outline.
6) The outline, renders a broken document. It does not make even sense in most cases.
7) You don't know where you really are, unless you take a look at the status bar, or the properties view. Its definitively not user friendly.

8) There are is a severe rendering problem with the DITA CSS. Don't know the rest of supported formats, but text is broken or overlapped.

9) Highlighting/navigation strategy in the document is confusing at best.


10) Menu options on top of any dita element, does not seem consistent.

11) Deleting tag does not work.


12) Trying to open existing DITA 1.1 files, work, but the rendered output  in the editor as well as the ouline is not understandable and simple not useful. (examples from DITA-OT1.5.1_full_easy_install_M6_bin\DITA-OT1.5.1\demo\book\*.xml)

13) No way at the moment to see the XML and work at that perspective.


The editor as it is, is far away from usable.

A good structured XML usability example for authoring can be seen at:
the Serna XML (which happens to be an open source editor)
http://downloads.syntext.com/serna-free/4.4.0-RELEASE/
In Serna, creating and authoring a Docbook or a DITA document, simply works and is more or less easy. (http://www.syntext.com/images/screenshots/serna-free-on-vista.png)



Don't know how to proceed for each item, but I want that users will feel good, are very productive and are happy to use Vex and finally promote it to their collegues.