Paste image into XML / Source code / plain text?

Question

Is there any IDE, or XML or plain text or source code editor, which can PASTE image into content?

By PASTING I mean reacting to Ctrl-V keystroke with following:

1) Creating an image file in code file's directory and giving it a random/sequential name

2) Insert a tag text into code file, like <IMG href=""/> or programming language read instruction, like Java's ImageIO.read.

This is required to minimize efforts while collecting image samples for programs or databases. Conventional way including saving file, giving a name to it, then manually typing-in the path -- consists of numerous unneeded keystrokes.

XXI century needs more automation!

Oxygen XML Editor has close functionality, but it is not good and is limited to small number of XML subformats.

Also it would be good if this editor can do the following:

3) Synchronize referred filename with actual filename

4) Render an image

UPDATE

Is there any conventional way to handle images in XML? I know I can uuencode it and insert. By why XML editors do not support this then?

UPDATE 2

Adobe Dreamweaver allows pasting images into XML and it inserts standard HTML <img> tag, but then is loses connection between tag and image, so, for example, you can't rename image file and have tag updated.

Answer 1

The most common way to handle images (or other large blocks of non-XML data) in XML is to use a URI to reference some location from which the application code can fetch the data as a separate document. The XHTML tag is a good example of this.

XML editors don't generally support uuencoding images because that is a much less common solution. It can certainly be done, if your application code knows to expect data in that form, but there isn't a lot of demand for it.

As far as maintaining the association between markup and external data... Generally, unless the tool has a move-external-data operation built into it, that's going to be your responsibility, just as it would be for HTML or other markup which references external data.

I can't advise you regarding tools since (a) picking a tool requires looking at exactly how well it interacts with the specific kinds of documents you want to process, and (b) I've generally just edited XML as text files with a bit of syntax-assist from Emacs or Eclipse, so I haven't investigated "XML editors" enough to have useful opinions on them.