Integrated Reading Tools

The idea is to experiment with integrating a set of tools into every article web page. In the first instance this would work with the TAPoRware? Tool Bar code, but ultimately the idea is to develop an open analytical tool framework.

The Idea

The idea is that readers of DHQ articles should be able to run analytical tools on the articles they have before them that take advantage of the enriched encoding. The reading tools would be of three sorts:

• Metadata tools that link you to more information related to the article at hand. These could be tools that find information about the author, for example.
• Analytical tools that let you analyze the text at hand.
• Management tools that let you manage research information.

The more sophisticated version of the idea would allow researchers to customize their own collection of tools from a menu of widgets provided by different developers. The custom tool bar would be available when they browsed DHQ or other participating sites.

An Example

Currently the TAPoR? project has code that can be dropped into the pipeline generating HTML from XML that provides a collapsing tool bar. You can see an example at the Globalization site where articles like this one have the tool bar at the bottom of the left column.

Process

A process for developing the idea is to:

1. When the new Cocoon version of DHQ is read, TAPoR? can install a sandbox version to demonstrate the concept.
2. Once TAPoR? has a demonstration version we can invite comments from DHQ collaborators on what tools are needed and how to integrate them.
3. We would then develop the tools and design elements for DHQ. These would be tested and, if appropriate, integrated into the journal.
4. We would then track tool usage and invite wider testing.
5. It would be interesting to think about comparative tools that work across documents.
6. Finally we would begin to look at the customizable widgets model.

-- GeoffreyRockwell? - 17 Oct 2007