Category Archives: Visual Studio .Net

Visual Studio and XMetaL

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I’m doing an XMetaL-based authoring environment based on scripts and stuff from earlier projects. I already have the CSS and I have most of the macros. All I need is a rules file, that is, XMetaL‘s compiled DTD file for the documents I need to write using this new environment, a few customisations, and a toolbar. For this I need to install 3.6 Gigabytes of Visual Studio .Net and XMetaL Developer. Is it just me or does any of you reading this agree with me that this is like taking an eighteen-wheeler to buy groceries? I know, I’ve ranted about this before, but it still amazes me that the XMetaL developers can allow this madness to continue.

C’mon, JustSystems, give us a way to customize XMetaL without having to buy Visual Studio. Give us what we had before XMetaL 4 and the misguided Corel deal to shut out other platforms. It doesn’t have to be like this.

XMetaL 5

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I’ve spent the last few days tinkering with an XMetaL authoring environment for a client. The XMetaL version is the latest, 5.0, which is actually a lot of fun, but unfortunately it means that I’ve been forced back to Windows. What’s worse, it also means that I’m forced to develop in Microsoft’s exceedingly bloated Visual Studio .Net, surely a punishment for a previous life.

It’s beyond me to understand why JustSystems, the Japanese company that bought XMetaL from Blast Radius, insists on this dependency.

An XMetaL developer doesn’t need all the bells, whistles, and bugs that is Visual Studio, he needs a reasonably flexible scripting environment, easy access to modifying CSS stylesheets, writing (XML-based) toolbars and customizations, as well as the occasional form or dialog.

The thing is, different developers have different preferences. While I do believe that there are people that actually like Visual Studio .Net, not all of us do. Maybe we prefer other languages, or maybe we believe that forcing us to use the same tool for everything just isn’t the right way to go. After all, even if you own an 18-wheel truck, you don’t use it to drive to the supermarket to buy groceries. You use a car or a bus or a bike. Something that doesn’t get in the way.

Because that’s what Visual Studio does. It gets in the way, and more so when all you want to do is to tweak a CSS stylesheet. And I haven’t even mentioned how hard it has become to change the DTD and then recompile it and import it into your project.

And I won’t, because my blood pressure is important to me.

So while XMetaL in its latest reincarnation is very nice, I still consider version 3.1 to be superior for a number of reasons, of which one important one (to me) is that I can run it in and wine and Linux.