Re: [syndication] CMS-Vendor list

["Dave Winer" <dave@userland.com>]

I've been reading the archives of Phil/Cam's list on the Web, and thinking
about the benchmark they've set for Word-friendly content management, and I
think the question must be brought up with Microsoft, before it can be
addressed by the CMS vendors.

Even if we figured out how to connect Word to a CMS, through WebDAV or
whatever, it would still have big problems integrating. Word does a lot more
than the Web can do. What's really needed is a "lite" version of Word,
custom-fitted to web-writing. A feature set limited to capabilities that are
present in the Web browser. Microsoft should know these limits well, since
they also make the leading browser, MSIE.

I wrote about such a product in May 1999: "If I owned Microsoft's Word or
even WordPad, here's what I would do. Take a snapshot of the codebase, pull
out the code behind the File menu and replace it with code that speaks to my
server. Let's call this product Corazon (it's close to Manila). When I
choose New from Corazon's File menu, it creates a new Untitled window. I
type. When I choose Save from the File menu, a dialog appears asking for the
Title of the document. It then shoots the file over the net, where it takes
its place on the content server that holds my website. Again, no FTP. The
computer remembers where my content belongs. It talks to another piece of
software that knows how to render the text as a page on the website. It does
all the messy complicated work for me. That's how computers are supposed to
work."
http://davenet.userland.com/1999/05/24/editThisPage

If anyone from Microsoft reads this, I'd be happy to talk directly about how
to create such a product and we would support it in our CMS. As Phil and
other content engineers know, and I agree, it would be killer.

Dave