[XML-SIG] curses xml browser/editor released

[tan@pobox.com]

folks,

I've put a python version of my (formerly perl) XML
browser/editor at

http://www.powerandlove.com/software/xml_browser

I wrote this because I wanted a character-cell (text user
interface) XML browser (with node editor) that worked like
Lynx in its arrow key navigation mode.

It uses PyNcurses and 4DOM-XML-Sig (which I believe is is the same as
4DOM 0.9.3).

constraints on the xml files this browser works with

This browser will display, and allow the user to browse all
of, any XML file which contains only element, attribute and
text nodes. (The perl version displays the attributes -
I'll soon add that feature to the python version.)

Example: the browser will display the following XML
document (minus the annotations):

<doc>living things
        <ul>animate objects             <-- the title of a branch
                <ul>plants              <-- the title of a branch
                        <li>trees</li>  <-- leaf node
                </ul>
                <ul>animals
                        <li>dogs</li>
                        <li>cats</li>
                </ul>
        </ul>
</doc>

as:
	living things     (black text)
	animate objects   (red text)

If the user presses the right arrow s/he'll see:

	* animate objects  (black text)
	plants             (red text - currently selected link)
	animals            (blue text - unselected link)
	
If s/he presses the down arrow once , s/he will see:

	* animate objects
	plants             (blue text - unselected link)
	animals            (red text - currently selected link)

If the user presses the right arrow s/he'll see:

	* animals         (black text - the name of the parent)
	* dogs            (black text - the value of a text
                        node)
	* cats            (black text - the value of a text
                        node)

To go up to the parent (animals), the user presses the left
arrow.
	
I.e., you navigate using your arrow keys, as in Lynx:

left    go up one level (to the current node's parent)
up      move the cursor to the next higher link
down	move the cursor to the next lower link
right	go to the node the current link points to

paging
p       previous page
n       next page

Pressing 'e' at any level will allow you to edit a node in
that level.

branch nodes

- the browser uses the value of a branch's text node 
	as the branch's title if it exists, else it uses the
	branch's tag name

tags

- one tag is the same as the next to the browser
	- e.g., the value of a text node of an element 
		whose tag is 'title' will not be treated as a title


I'd love to have help with this project. For instance, it'd
be nice to have a version for MS-DOS. (I know nothing about
DOS character-cell programming.)

Tom
-- 
Tom Newman		tan@pobox.com