Literate Documentation for XML Schema

Next Steps

2007-06-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

6/21 Conversation with Allen

METS-ODD Project Next Steps

Examine publicly available METS Profiles for interesting constraints expressed in natural language

This is not a scientific, line-by-line survey, but an informal review
Don’t get bogged down trying differentiate between syntactic and semantic constraints
Any constraint that can possibly be represented in a schema can be considered syntactic

Choose 4-12 interesting constraint patterns to examine in detail

All profile constraints are currently expressed by natural language statements of varying length and detail.
Consider what schema language could be used to express the constraint

i. Ignore those constraints that can be represented with a DTD

ii. Consider whether W3C Schema, Relax NG, or Schematron can represent more challenging constraints

iii. Don’t worry about trying to definitely prove whether a constraint cannot be represented in a particular schema language, this is interesting but beyond the immediate scope of this project.

Create a table containing an analysis of the selected constraints. Each constraint listing will include a (1) brief, identifying phrase, (2) a short description and account of how the constraint could represented in an existing schema language, and (3) appropriate examples taken from the public METS profile showing how the constraint is currently expressed in natural language.
Create small XML vocabularies that allow authors to represent the selected constraints in the TEI ODD literate programming format.

Extend the TEI ODD vocabulary to include these vocabularies
Create an example ODD fragment for each XML vocabulary

Create templates that will process the ODD fragments to generate a machine readable expression of these constraints. Experiment with two ways of doing this:

XSLT
Schematron

Digital Humanities Poster Materials

2007-06-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

Poster Title: Literate Documentation for XML: TEI ODD - METS
Presented at Digital Humanities 2007 on June 6, 2007 in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.

Current Project Plan/Treatment PDF | DOC
METS-ODD Application Diagram PPT | PDF
Abstract in Conference Proceedings
Conference Poster - Large Format (PPT) | Small Format (PDF) | References
Partial METS/Extended ODD Document Instance (XML)
Sample Documentation for Instance (HTML)

Detailed Abstract

2006-11-13T19:28:00.000-08:00

Detailed Project Abstract 11-15

This document contains a brief description of the project rationale and a sketch of the demonstration application I plan to complete.

Project Notes and Outline

2006-09-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

Detailed Project Outline (Unfinished)

The major hole in this document is the identification of some instructive examples from real-world document instances, schemas, and documentation from XML applications. I hope to identify some shortly to help guide the creation of the project demonstration application.

The Document Types I'm looking at are:

METS
Atom
OAI-PMH
Open Office Document Format
XHTML/TEI/Docbook - in order to provide a document centric example

I also need to develop a much more fully realized discussion of how this system relates to other proposals to deal with semantics and XML.

I also need more discussion regarding the capabilities of the TEI One Document Does it All (ODD) literate programming system as a documentation tool for important semantic characteristics of XML.

Proposed Application Sketch

Use the TEI existing Tagset Documention (Chapter 27 of the Guidelines) as the Base of the application. Extend this to support the general purpose authoring of XML schema using the ODD format. This extension will contain the prescribed DSS elements outlined in the Project Outline.

The major component of this will be structured natural language prose that clearly describes the semantics of the markup language. This extension will also involve modifying the TEI sytlesheet package to make sure that well-formatted documentation for the extensions to the ODD will created.

Several Extreme Papers from this year's conference seemed highly relevant to this project. I plan to give these more thorough review. They are:

Implementing XML Schema Naming and Design Rules
A Natural Language Approach to Modeling: Why is some XML so difficult to write?

Project Documents

2006-07-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

Current Project Documents:

Original Project Website
Original Project Proposal (PDF)
Informal Poster (PPT) presented at the 2003 Extreme Markup Languages Conference
Expanded Paper based on the 2003 Extreme Poster
Current Extended Abstract and Project Plan (PDF)