January 28th, 2005
I took another look at html-helper-mode for Emacs again, on account of it being mentioned in Learning GNU Emacs (3rd Edition. I had about as much success with it as I did the very first time I tried to use Emacs, which is to say none at all. The web page is basically the same as it was all those years ago, and there's still no decent documentation. The files haven't been updated very recently, and even with the book's help I can't get past what I've decided is the single most important feature I need: proper indentation.
Rather than waste any more time with html-helper-mode, I tossed it and started looking at the books other suggestion, a package called Emacs WebDev Environment. That at least has documentation, but it's written from the bias of someone using Red Hat 9. It uses psgml mode, but I notice that mode isn't in active development. I can't really see any benefit with this package beyond what I've already got with nxml-mode, so I'm opting to stay with that.
But then there's TEI Emacs. Do I use that, and enjoy the luxury of having all kinds of XML-y stuff already raring to go, or do I take the harder but more portable approach of staying with regular emacs and customizing as I go? I recall that the last time I used TEI Emacs, I had the feeling that all its extras were an obstacle against easy moving around between Windows usage and Linux usage. Don't want to recover ground I've already been through.