below:
part of the report as displayed in the Client's house style on a Windows desktop - the scroll bar at right provides an indication of the total size
left:
two of the PDA screens that showed parts of the total report
This case study illustrates our authoring applications running on handheld devices as well as standard desktop PCs. Our client conducted building inspections, which had historically been documented by secretaries using Word template documents, into which they entered details based on faxed report forms prepared by the inspectors when working onsite. Our solution replaced Word by XML documents, for which we developed a custom author. This provided improved production and quality assurance processes, and enhanced value - unlike Word documents the well-structured XML content could be readily analysed for statistical and research purposes.
A key project objective was to copy the XML document files unchanged to PDAs and to view or work on them on the handheld. The reports were often as large as 30 A4 pages when printed; SMH Systems developed a viewer for use in the field, with stylesheets and navigation optimised for the handheld device. We also developed an author for the PDA, used to take notes during onsite inspections, to update sections of existing reports, and to organise and integrate photographs.
The Inspection Reports were complex XML documents. In order to facilitate possible future conversion of the legacy document base they were designed to support all the constructions of the existing Word documents, which had multiple sections each with unique composition. The schema definition, itself an XML document, was over 850 lines. The instance documents were typically between 40K-60K in size.
An XSLT Stylesheet was constructed to display the XML report document in a web browser with identical look-and-feel to the Word documents, which often extended to 30 A4 pages. A suite of stylesheets were prepared for the Pocket PC to enable the same report to be displayed, separated into short sections, on the handheld device.
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These screenshots illustrate the portability across platforms - the same 46K XML document was the source for both the Windows and PDA displays shown here. below: part of the report as displayed in the Client's house style on a Windows desktop - the scroll bar at right provides an indication of the total size left: two of the PDA screens that showed parts of the total report |
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Our solution for this client included authoring tools for both Windows and Pocket PC environments. The desktop author provided a complete set of facilities for constructing report documents; the key objective of the PDA tools was fast capture of notes during onsite work, which could be finalised later using the desktop author.
Taking of notes on the PDA during onsite work was power-assisted by providing structured walkthroughs for all common situations: the inspector was presented with a cascading sequence of picklists that enabled fast drilldown to standard text for all common situations, from which the inspector could select as required. (The picklists themselves were coded as XML documents, for which we constructed some simple authoring tools). The author on Pocket PC also included tools for maintaining inventories of photographs that were taken during the inspection, and which could be incorporated into the report.
With SMH Systems' solution, unlike many PDA data entry applications, the handheld device did not generate a lightweight output file type such as CSV. The PDA could accept, process and return the large and complete XML report document with all its richness of detail. This greatly simplified and speeded the interfacing between processing steps, while other major benefits included the potential to return the document to the Pocket PC at a later date, and re-use it as the starting point for subsequent inspections.
More screenshots and information on the Pocket PC component can be found under the Case Study Pocket PC Authoring Application.