Let's say we want to build a new kick-ass CMS. My technical side tells me that the best way it to use markup language and separate data from presentation (which allows swapping of themes).
My practical side tells is is better to allow users to edit html. Everytime I has worked with end-users I had a hard time explaining this concept of separation of data from presentation. They usually want a page tat looks like "that page" but the ability to edit all text and images in it. Most CMS's (like concrete CMS) solve the problem by a compromise. You can only edit specific parts of a page (and they must be clearly tag in the HTML). This allows some separation because as long as two themes have the same editable tags, the content it portable between the themes. Yet if they use a wysiwyg the editable blocks are stored as HTML. Moreover creating themes requires some programming skills and make the themes CMS specific. In the case of Concrete5 or Joomla for example, this tagging is done in PHP. So what is better? 1) using a markup language with limited choice of themes (like wikipedia) 2) using wysiwyg to edit fixed sections in themes (like joomla and concrete5) 3) using fully editable html with no limitation on themes (any existing page would be a theme without need for tweaking) yet one would not be able to swap a theme on a page without loss of content, any more you can swap the theme on a msworld document. Massimo
