An approach to realizing user-friendly authoring tool for Document-centric XML

Document-centric XML is usually designed for human consumption and has several characteristics from its nature. Document-centric XML often includes nested compound XML vocabularies within one document. A typical example is XHTML-formatted content augmented by SVG, MathML and ChemicalML. Compound document supports rich and comprehensible content development. Mixed contents (elements which have text content mixed with elements) and recursive nesting of elements are another characteristics of document-centric XML. Authoring process of document-centric XML also has characteristics. In case of data-centric XML generation, structure is provided first and then contents are provide. In case of document-centric XML authoring, content is often provided first and then users provide markups. To realize practical authoring tool for document-centric XML, these characteristics should be taken into account.

There are two typical approaches in current XML authoring tools. One approach is authoring tools with `Form-based’ user interfaces. Their user interfaces are similar to those of traditional relational database applications. Although they are very comprehensible and easy to use for end users, they are not enough for document-centric XML. It is because their interface are suitable to present fixed data fields and do not have flexibility to handle Document-centric XML. The other approach is authoring tools with `Tree-based’ user interfaces. Their interfaces display structured symbols (typically tree) directly reflecting the structure of XML. Although tree-based editors can provide flexible context-sensitive operation, it is not easy to use them for non-expert users.

In this presentation we will discuss a hybrid approach of `Form-based’ and `Tree-based’ authoring methodology to realize user-friendliness. Form-based comprehensible interface is applied to handle fixed structure. Context-sensitive guided authoring is applied to handle the structure which has to be determined just in editing time. This can allow `content first, mark up second’ style authoring easily. In both cases, authoring operation is guided and constrained in order to keep documents valid against arbitrary schema. We will provide an architectural overview of new developing environment for document-centric XML authoring tool. It consists of authoring runtime and a design tool. Authoring runtime enables visual authoring of nested compound XML vocabularies. Design tool enables GUI-based definition of XML schema and appropriate authoring interface for its structure.