C# has a framework called MSXML and Java has the SAX Parser. Web browsers are trained to parse XML already, and Adobe has Spry to enable page authors to parse XML documents from external sources. Spry therefore seems like an ideal toolkit to prototype and describe functionality of our XML toolkits in online documentation! Testing functionality therefore becomes a trained-monkey style task like lever pulling, of comparing program output to the documented specifications, which is slightly less complicated than blackjack though it can also be profitable.
The application that I have in mind is a tool for foreign language students to enable homework collaboration. This is basically a dictionary which will live on http://thursday.nerdland.org/dict. The interface should allow a web user to click on a word on either side of the line (eg. arabic/english) and edit the word; a third comments field will also facilitate collaboration over confusing translations. Adding a new entry should be as simple as clicking an empty field and entering some data. I'm not interested in an overcomplicated accordion-style user interface at this point!
C# application users will have the choice of a Cocoa-Sharp or Windows.Forms interface depending on their platform, and these applications will edit the data locally, as it is checked out of subversion into a sandbox, or remotely onto thursday, where anonymous updates are periodically noted and logged into the subversion repository. Therefore it is necessary for users to register and receive write access to the repository in order to receive credit via svn blame. I wonder if this problem is solved by monotone, mercurial, or any of the new scm tools on the market?
Saturday, September 15, 2007
XML Developer Toolkits
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For the time being, since all of my writes are piped through Subversion and commits generate RSS feeds, I want to see if I can get all of this data aggregated somewhere to display a recap of what I've done. This is the first in a campaign of "insourcing" problems that have ready made solutions, as a way of investing in a problem.
Think how helpful it is to be able to review all of your notes? What if you write in a handful of notebooks, wouldn't it be helpful to get a view of all the notes in chronological order? Wouldn't it be nice to have a view of your train of thought, as you have it published?
I think a Spry OPML/RSS application is in order.
By the way, it lives on friday.nerdland.org.
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