Document-Centric Editing

There are two approaches to content editing in a web browser. The first is a data-oriented approach, where the content is split into concrete parts. The editing occurs in a <form> with various fields. This approach fits best when there are specific pieces of information needed for the resource.

The second is a document-oriented approach, where the essence of the resource is free-flowing. This does not mean that the content is unstructured, but it is less rigid than fields. Often there are elements that provide metadata for the resource.

Most information in organizations is free-flowing, as studies show. For these cases, a rich editor like Kupu makes sense. Equally, these cases point towards a document-centric approach, rather than rigid HTML forms.

The following table shows different aspects, and happens to give us a chance to test table editing in Kupu:

Comparing Data- and Document-Centric