Open Cross-Document Linking and Browsing based on a Visual Plug-in Architecture

2 December 2005

Open Cross-Document Linking and Browsing

based on a Visual Plug-in Architecture

Ahmed A.O.Tayeh and Beat Signer

Web & Information Systems Engineering Lab (WISE)

Department of Computer Science

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

WEB & INFORMATIONSYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Ahmed Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - [email protected] 14, 2014

Isolated Digital Documents

×

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HTML document PDF document


Isolated Digital Documents …

2

×××

Word document PDF document


Isolated Digital Documents …

Limited possibilities to create hyperlinks between snippets

of different document formats

document formats mainly address links to web resources (HTML)

simple embedded unidirectional links

linked documents are not aware of any links that have been defined from other source documents

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Existing Support for Hyperlinks

4


Cross-Document Linking

Anchor (page index + ec(x,y,w,h)) Anchor (XPointer-like expression)

Anchor (start and end indices) Anchor(XPointer expression)

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PDF (linear-like model) HTML (tree model)

Text (linear model) XML (tree model)


Open Hypermedia

No support for cross-document linking

Limited extensibility on the data as well as

on the visual level

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MADCOW: A Multimedia Digital Annotation System,

Paolo Bottoni et al., Proceedings of AVI 2004


Requirements for a Linking Service

No changes required to existing document formats and

standards

No assumptions about the document models e.g. WYSIWYG, tree models, constrained tree models, …

Support existing as well as emerging document formats

Support advanced linking features

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Open Cross-Media Architecture

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Annotation/Link

Service

Client Application

Annotation/Link

Browser & Editor

Visual Plug-ins

Resource Plug-in Repository

Data Plug-ins

Visual Plug-ins Data Plug-insVisual Plug-ins

An Architecture for Open Cross-Media Annotation Services,

Beat Signer and Moria C. Norrie, Proceeding of WISE 2009


Data Level Extensibility (RSL Approach)

As We May Link: A General Metamodel for Hypermedia Systems,

Beat Signer and Moria C. Norrie, Proceeding of ER 2007

……

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file://URLfile://URL…shapeXPointer(s,e)XPointer…


Visualisation Layer Extensibility

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local visual plug-ins

external visual plug-ins com

mu

nic

ate

Link Browser


Visualisation Layer Extensibility …

Local visual plug-ins vs. external visual plug-ins

Link Browser

Link visual plug-in Link visual plug-in

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Acrobat Reader Google Chrome



DefaultDocument class necessary methods to visualise

any document format

- getSelector()

- openDocument()

- …

event listeners and handlers

Local visual plug-ins extend DefaultDocument class

might use existing visualisation libraries

Link browser instantiates DefaultDocument

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DocFormat1 DocFormat3 DocFormat2

Visual Plug-ins

Visualisation

Gateway DocFormat3

DocFormat3 Application

Third-Party Applications

Vis

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lisa

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Vis

ualis

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2

Browser



External visual plug-ins provide methods to handle selections

in third-party applications

communicate with the link browservia a specific gateway plug-in

Gateway plug-ins launch third-party application

offer different communicationprotocols

- TCP sockets

- WebSockets

- REST API as a fallback


Visual Plug-ins

Visualisation

Gateway DocFormat3


Third-Party Applications

Vis

ua

lisa

tio

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ocF

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at1

Vis

ualis

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2

Browser

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Open Cross-Document Link Service Architecture

DocFormat3

Database

DocFormat2DocFormat1


Visual Plug-ins

Visualisation

Gateway DocFormat3

RSL

Database Manager


Third-Party ApplicationsData Plug-ins

Core

Data Layer

Vis

ua

lisa

tio

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Vis

ualis

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2

Browser

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Open Service Gateway initiative (OSGi)

Enhances modularisation of our linking service

Use OSGi dynamic extensibility for dynamic extensibility

of the linking service

OSGi versioning and dependency resolution reduces

problems in dealing with multiple libraries (“JAR hell”) linking service might provide different visual plug-ins (versions) for

a single document format

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Open Service Gateway initiative (OSGi) …

User Interface Manifest

Manifest-Version: 1.0

Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2

Bundle-Name: UserInterface

Bundle-SymbolicName: com.rsl.userInterface

Bundle-Version: 1.0.0.qualifier

Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment: JavaSE-1.7

Export-Package: org.rsl.userInterface

Import-Package: org.rsl.core, org.rsl.service,

org.rsl.databasemanager,

org.associations.collections,

org.osgi.framework;version="1.7.0"

PDF Local Visual Plug-in Manifest

Manifest-Version: 1.0

Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2

Bundle-Name: Visual

Bundle-SymbolicName: org.rsl.pdf.visual

Bundle-Version: 1.0.0.qualifier

Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment: JavaSE-1.7

Import-Package: org.rsl.core, org.rsl.userInterface,

org.rsl.pdf.data

Extension-Class: org.rsl.pdf.visual.Pdf

Extension-Type: visual

Extension-Format: application/pdf

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Link Navigation Scenario

Browser RSL Registry DocFormat1 Gateway DocFormat3 DocFormat2 DocFormat3

getSelection()

selector

alt

getPluginType(formatName)

instantiateClass()

openDocument(resource, selectors, selector)

instantiateClass()

openDocument(resource, selectors, selector)openDocument(resource, selectors, selector)

launchApp()

[visualPlugin==local]

[else]

getLinkTarget(selector)

getDocument(resource)

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Evaluation: PDF, XML, Text and HTML Plug-ins

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Conclusion and Future Work

Cross-document link service prototype

Extensibility on the data as well as the visualisation layer

OSGi framework for extensible architecture

Evaluation with PDF, XML, Text and HTML plug-ins

Dynamic plug-in extensibility

Investigate extensibility in a study with developers

Usability evaluation

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References

A.A.O Tayeh and Beat Signer, Open Cross-

Document Linking and Browsing based on a Visual

Plug-in Architecture, Proceedings of WISE 2014,15th

International Conference on Web Information System

Engineering, Thessaloniki, Greece, October, 2014 http://wise.vub.ac.be/sites/default/files/publications/WISE2014.pdf

http://wise.vub.ac.be/sites/default/files/publications/WISE2014.pdf

Open Cross-Document Linking and Browsing based on a Visual Plug-in Architecture

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