While XML has made great strides in becoming the lingua-franca of data, for Web services, SOAP and other B2B applications, there are still great challenges to XML when one considers it in a document-centric role. There are already good tools that allow developers to create schemas and transforms and even author XML documents. However, it is the information worker or business user, not the programmer, who creates and updates the bulk of an organization's documents. The first generation of XML tools fell well short in this regard, lacking the intuitive interfaces expected by information workers.

Desktop adoption has been limited as many of today's XML editors were not designed from the ground up for the information worker. New editors with better approaches to presenting XML to these users are now becoming available. This presentation will discuss these new approaches and how they address the information worker's issues. It will also look at strategies for handling text entry at ambiguous positions within the document, attribute management and presenting errors to the user.

Creating data as XML is only the first part of the story. XML, like HTML, is just text making it easy for developers to create and understand. However, some of the key technologies required to fully realize the power of XML are much harder for developers to use, notably XSLT and XML Schemas. The presentation will touch on this and discuss how these tools have evolved. Specifically exploring their readiness for broader adoption.