Rita - an Editor and User Interface for Manipulating Structured Documents

SUMMARY Structured documents such as those developed for SGML, GML or L TEX usually contain a combination of text and tags. Since various types of documents require tags with different placement, the creator of a document must learn and retain a large amount of knowledge. Rita consists of an editor and user interface which are controlled by a grammar or description of a document type and its tags, and which guide the user in preparing a document, thus avoiding the problems of tags being used or placed incorrectly. The user interface contains a display which is almost WYSIWYG so that the appearance of the document can be examined while it is being prepared. This paper describes Rita, its user interface and some of its internal structure and algorithms, and relates anecdotal user experiences. Comparisons are also made with other commercial and experimental systems.

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