I've been researching collaborative solutions engineering and design problems for years now, and it seems this is the year when systems for this will make their breakthrough. They've showed promise for some time and are now becoming available for implementation e.g. at the Jena conference that I attended - Proceedings at http://jena.hpl.hp.com/juc2006/proceedings.html.
I'm particularly interested in An Ontology-Based Architecture for
Adaptive Work-Centered User Interface Technology as this looks very useful
for large Aerospace and engineering companies such as those we deal with - -
http://jena.hpl.hp.com/juc2006/proceedings/crapo/paper.pdf,
http://jena.hpl.hp.com/juc2006/proceedings/crapo/slides.ppt.
We have also been using a Decision Support tool and are part of a modelling
network, an example of a model we added to this network to enable users to program and output
their model on the web is at http://wiki.vanguardsw.com/bin/browse.dsb?det/Engineering/Aerospace/Wing%20Spar%20Translated%20from%20Protege%20Taxonomy.
The projects are aimed at making it possible for end users who create Excel
spreadsheets to create software that becomes part of a more integrated
system. There are other projects that aim to enable users to create
searchable and interactive web based content more easily.
Some of the projects using Protégé may also be relevant to this http://protege.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ProjectsThatUseProtege.
These End User Groups in USA http://eusesconsortium.org/ and Europe http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/eud-net.htm may be able to take on this problem. If anyone has any information about projects to allow users to collaborate and create content please let me know.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Monday, May 01, 2006
Visual Editor for SVG? (Scalable Vector Graphics)
It would be interesting to know whether any companies or researchers, are working on a visual development environment for creating SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) movies, and interactive components. This would be very useful, Flash, Viewlet Builder, and many other tools are good for creating movies and interactive presentations. However there is a need for something that has this ease of use, and produces the same kind of output, using open standard SVG.
This would provide the capability to represent each picture in an alternative way for the blind. Without this functionality, web developers need to manually provide a separate representation for blind people. I doubt that every web developer does this. The SVG output could be the basis of providing a Flash movie, from which information could be extracted automatically. This extracted information would provide the alternative representation for blind people and non-Flash users. Also such a tool would be very good for allowing information to be extracted from the picture, e.g. values and labels from a graph, or attributes from a part diagram.
If the SVG items are grouped in an appropriate way this could make it possible to allow extraction of objects and properties represented in SVG that have a clear meaning. Adobe has acquired http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html, so perhaps they're doing something similar to Flash but with an SVG output? It would be good to see an automatic way of providing the sort of functionality illustrated at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/InteractiveSVGExamples.htm. This is output automatically from a taxonomy represented in Protege, through a Decision support system DecisionPro http://www.vanguardsw.com/.
This sort of thinking ahead by software suppliers would make it much easier for ordinary users to provide good interactive content for the web. This is the basis of 'End User Development', a technique for making it easier for computer literate non-developers to create software. In this case the application of this technique would be enabling the construction of accessible interactive web pages.
This would provide the capability to represent each picture in an alternative way for the blind. Without this functionality, web developers need to manually provide a separate representation for blind people. I doubt that every web developer does this. The SVG output could be the basis of providing a Flash movie, from which information could be extracted automatically. This extracted information would provide the alternative representation for blind people and non-Flash users. Also such a tool would be very good for allowing information to be extracted from the picture, e.g. values and labels from a graph, or attributes from a part diagram.
If the SVG items are grouped in an appropriate way this could make it possible to allow extraction of objects and properties represented in SVG that have a clear meaning. Adobe has acquired http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html, so perhaps they're doing something similar to Flash but with an SVG output? It would be good to see an automatic way of providing the sort of functionality illustrated at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/InteractiveSVGExamples.htm. This is output automatically from a taxonomy represented in Protege, through a Decision support system DecisionPro http://www.vanguardsw.com/.
This sort of thinking ahead by software suppliers would make it much easier for ordinary users to provide good interactive content for the web. This is the basis of 'End User Development', a technique for making it easier for computer literate non-developers to create software. In this case the application of this technique would be enabling the construction of accessible interactive web pages.
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