User-Agent Requirements for CBD

Basic User Agent

Assumptions

• no network connection
• AND inadequate resources to run personal httpd

Minimal Functionality

• select dictionary articles
• view dictionary article outlines with type-example references
• view reference context

Fulfillable by

• html instantiation of CBD
• accessed by any web-browser

Advanced User Agent

Assumptions

• satisfactory network link [definition of satisfactory depends on user]
• OR adequate resources to run personal httpd

Minimal Functionality

• All Basic UA functions
• optionally import full reference lists dynamically, including uncategorized references
• re-sort reference lists by genre/time/place/orth

Fulfillable by

• xml instantiation of CBD
• web connection or user-local httpd with CGI capability
• XML-aware browser with CSS2, JS and XSL support [Mozilla will meet this requirement]
• CGI-based interaction with query engine
• EITHER optimized XML Query language [XPath not enough (running time issues for large datasets)]
• OR external query systems [SQL/home-grown]

Creation/Exploration User Agent

Assumptions

• client JVM runnable on local machine
• satisfactory network connection and server JVM on remote machine
• OR server JVM also runnable on local machine

Minimal Functionality

• All Advanced UA functions
• perform queries on corpora outside context of specific articles
• sort and structure query results, mark for deletion or ignoring
• save and reload query results locally
• create new articles outside of search result context
• create new articles based on ongoing structuring and sorting of references within search result context
• invisibly manage relationship between references and their locations in the corpora
• permit inclusion of notes pointing to pertinent secondary literature on specific references or on the word or meanings of sections
• permit querying corpora for inclusion of specific texts or fragments by common referents (e.g., museum-number of manuscripts; principle publication)
• facilitate locating and referencing bibliographical items from secondary literature
• invisibly manage relationship between selected bibliographical items and their location in the bibliography list
• save and reload articles locally
• submit articles for inclusion in CBD

Desirable Functionality

• interoperability with corpus-editing tools [e.g., click on reference to update corpus-reference for quick fixing of typos etc.]
• EITHER support of scholarly authoring within UA
• OR easy exportation of (structured/sorted) result-sets for importation to text-editors/word-processors [RTF export generated by XSL?]

Fulfillable by

• PDOM instantiation of CBD
• (Java-based) PDOM manager/server [Ozone for now; PDOM manager and server could be two separate programs; local-only access could be done by binding Java client directly to PDOM]
• purpose-built Java client (using Swing etc., as much as possible to reduce implementation burden)
• integrated interaction with query engine [embedded XQL; system calls to query programs; JDBC]