Note: This is a duplicate message previously posted in another forum. It should
be in the other forum if that forum is "(Dreamweaver Application) Development",
but not if the forum is "Dreamweaver (Application Development)".

My organization has come up with a custom XML-based format that we plan to use
to allow people in our organization to create web pages very easily. Almost
everyone is familar with and currently uses Dreamweaver, so we were hoping that
Dreamweaver could provide an easy-to-use interface for editing our XML pages.

However, we have run into many troubles trying to customize Dreamweaver.
First, it doesn't like the fact that we want another format with the .XML
extension (it doesn't appear to be able to look at the DOCTYPE to figure out
what kind of document it is). Once you apply a hack-job to get around that, it
seems impossible to get the document to show up right. New documents have
tabbing that's strange and different from the Default file, syntax highlighting
doesn't always work, and most importantly, the Insert Bar doesn't want to be
enabled when editing our XML-based document. And don't tell me, "oh, the Insert
Bar is never enabled with XML documents," because I will ask "Why?" and "Did
the Dreamweaver developers actually think that no one will ever need to create
an insert bar to allow them to quickly make changes to their XML documents?"

These problems are pertaining to just getting the code view to work. It would
be ideal if we could set Dreamweaver up so that certain XML tags render in the
design view like the yellow special tags and like the Dreamweaver template
objects. That is exactly what we are looking for and as far as I know, no one
offers a product that can make XML editing that simple.

Please help. I thought Dreamweaver would be the solution to our templating
system, as no other XML programs seem to have the features we need and not be
full of bugs or be plastered with advertisments for full versions of software.
With Dreamweaver appearing to not be capable of useful XML editing, I have been
considering writing an easy XML editing application outside of work, just
because I know that there are others in my situation, who need an XML editor
that is easy enough for someone who doesn't know XML to be able to create
documents with a predefined form. However, Dreamweaver would be much easier.
Thankyou in advance.