Speaking of XML editors, my favorite, hands down, is XMetaL. It’s user-friendly, fast, and easy enough to customize. I’ve written tens of thousands of pages with it, and if I had a choice, I’d continue using it without a second thought.

Unfortunately, XMetaL is only available for Windows. There’s no Linux version, no *nix whatsoever. This is probably not going to change, either, because BlastRadius insists on coupling XMetaL Developer (the version you need if you want to customize the product) with Microsoft Visual Studio. This is probably the single most limiting business decision they’ve imposed on the product: none of the developers I know likes the Microsoft IDE. In fact, most avoid it as the plague. Believe it or not, there are far better IDEs available.

Also, XMetaL doesn’t work in Wine, the fake Windows environment found in Linux. I’ve tried, but I can’t make it work. Most of the lesser XML tools work, but not XMetaL.

It’s about time someone developed a decent XML editor for Linux.