Xeena for schema: creating XML documents with a coordinated grammar tree

The vast heterogeneous network that is the World Wide Web requires common languages to facilitate the exchange and display of data and information in many forms. The Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed the extensible markup language (XML) for this purpose. XML documents are produced automatically by applications or manually by users. When users do not produce documents regularly or when document languages are large and complex, manual editing can be a challenge. In these situations, better manual editing facilities that guide users and ease the burden of learning and recalling XML languages are needed. We present an XML editor design implemented in our Xeena for schema editor that addresses these needs. It is based on a new tree based grammar view that guides novice users and empowers experienced users to build XML documents. It lets users see and edit multiple levels of potential elements, unlike existing editors that present only one level of potential elements. We demonstrate its key features, present our grammar tree view design both informally and formally, and describe a user evaluation that supports the usability of our design.

[1]  Yardena Peres,et al.  Browsing and Editing XML Schema Documents with an Interactive Editor , 2003, DNIS.

[2]  Kent Wittenburg,et al.  Visual focusing and transition techniques in a treeviewer for Web information access , 1997, Proceedings. 1997 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages (Cat. No.97TB100180).

[3]  Mark Sifer,et al.  A Formalism for Navigating and Editing XML Document Structure , 2007, DNIS.

[4]  Yardena Peres,et al.  Xeena for Schema: Creating XML Data with an Interactive Editor , 2002, DNIS.

[5]  Marvin V. Zelkowits.  A small contribution to editing with a syntax directed editor , 1984 .

[6]  Helen Hasan,et al.  Activity Theory Usability Laboratory (ATUL) , 2001, INTERACT.

[7]  Yannis Papakonstantinou,et al.  DTD inference for views of XML data , 2000, PODS.

[8]  Vincent Quint,et al.  A Structured Authoring Environment for the World-Wide Web , 1995, Comput. Networks ISDN Syst..

[9]  Vincent Quint,et al.  Interactively Editing Structured Documents , 1989, Electron. Publ..

[10]  Lisa Rubin Neal.  Cognition-sensitive design and user modeling for syntax-directed editors , 1986, CHI '87.

[11]  Chris North,et al.  A Taxonomy of Multiple Window Coordinations , 1998 .

[12]  Donald D. Cowan,et al.  Rita - an Editor and User Interface for Manipulating Structured Documents , 1991, Electron. Publ..

[13]  Michael L. Van de Vanter,et al.  The Pan language-based editing system , 1992, TSEM.

[14]  Boris Chidlovskii,et al.  A structural adviser for the XML document authoring , 2003, DocEng '03.

[15]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Expandable indexes vs. sequential menus for searching hierarchies on the World Wide Web , 2002, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[16]  Serge Abiteboul,et al.  Semistructured data: from practice to theory , 2001, Proceedings 16th Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science.

[17]  Thomas Reps,et al.  Programming Techniques and Data Structures , 1981 .