Authoring is implemented as an add-in to a reader application. Our readers enable the user to navigate an XML document, or a collection of XML documents, and to display selected content in a preferred user-friendly appearance - often a familiar presentation format already employed in a published document or catalogue.
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| Reader View | Author/Editor View |
The content authoring add-in enables data to be edited, added, deleted, or moved around - everything an author may want to do with a document. Clicking the 'Edit' button in the Control Panel at lower right switches into editing mode, and activates the authoring functions for the content currently selected for display. Once in edit mode, selection buttons are positioned to the right of displayed data, and an additional form view of selected data is presented in the lower part of the display . Click on any selection button in the top display and the data alongside is presented in the form below for editing.
Change the content in the form, click 'Apply' and the top display is instantly refreshed to include the changes. If more edits are required, simply continue to update the form and click 'Apply' again. Each editing form is customised for the particular data element, and can include any required business rules logic.
How is the data established in the first place? Depending on the permitted data structures there could be none, one or several instance of similar-structured elements at any point in the data tree. Where variable occurrences are permitted, a second button is displayed - click this and it expands into four controls for modifying the structure of the document. We call these functions 'IDCM'. They are:
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The screen at left illustrates editing of a section of the data where variable occurrences are permitted | ||||
| The additional IDCM buttons expand when clicked into controls that enable deletion, copying or moving of the selected element, or insertion of another element at that point | |||||
 | This shows a page from the printed manual - even for complex data the screens for authoring the XML content are designed to display user-friendly replicas of the familiar hardcopy materials | ||||
Insertions can be accomplished by supplying a template to provide the substructure for the element and any initial values that may be required, or by prompting for necessary element values, or a combination. Options and alternatives are no problem - if there's more than one type of element that can be inserted in any context, a menu of choices can be displayed. (Our Manuals Machine which you can download provides examples of this).
Edit and IDCM functions are provided by custom programming, implemented as small modules of HTML to provide the user interface plus Script to provide the application logic and to embed any required business rules. To support the Script code we have developed a functions library which hides some difficult parts of programming the XML DOM and replaces them by simple parameterised operations. The editing forms are produced by a parameterised generator so they're simple to design and maintain, and any special logic for business rules is fully exposed in script code.
There's also a library of functions behind our Control Panel. These enable a variety of options for storing the data, including using server file system or an XML DBMS, plus control over commit/rollback.
Naturally the schema rules are enforced and content that doesn't comply won't be saved. But we can do much more than that. Whatever particular business rules are required can be incorporated into the forms that are used for editing the data content. These can include syntax checking, check-digit calculation, specified reasonableness checks, cross-field checks, table lookups, etc. All capabilities of the scripting language environments supported by Internet Explorer can be exploited.
Because our readers can provide complete and user-friendly navigation of any XML structure, and because we can provide Edit and IDCM functions at any point in the data tree, there's no real limit to the structures we can handle, the method of interaction with the user, and the validations and business rules that can be implemented. Isn't that a better solution than trying to do it with Word or Excel macros?