Developing collaborative XML editing systems

2007

Abstract: Synchronisation of replicated shared data is a key issue in collaborative writing systems. Most existing synchronization tools are specific to a particular type of shared data, ie text files, calendars, XML files. Therefore, users must use different tools to maintain their different copies up-to-date. In this paper we propose a generic synchronization framework based on the operational transformation approach that supports synchronisation of text files, calendars, XML files by using the same tool.

2002

In the last years the Web became a great communication medium for publishing and delivering online multimedia documents. Therefore, the production (authoring, generation, transformation) of such documents became one of the most active research fields. This paper presents a web-based environment for cooperatively editing documents with workflow technology. The workflow technology provides a group of authors scattered across the network the means of guiding the authoring process by controlling the cooperative work. Second, this environment uses the most modern and promising Web technologies, such as XML, SVG, and SMIL to obtain a solution deployable world wide. Finally, we present another aspect concerning the content and user characteristics using CC/PP technology. Following such model offers not only a good description of the environment and its capabilities but defines also strategies about how some efficient interactions can be achieved.

2009

XML is based on two essential aspects: the modelization of data in a tree like structure and the separation between the information itself and the way it is displayed. XML structures are easily serializable. The separation between an abstract representation and one or several views on it allows the elaboration of specialized interfaces to visualize or modify data. A lot of developments were made to interact with XML data but the use of these applications over the Internet is just starting. This paper presents a prototype of a distributed editing environment over the Internet. The key point of our system is the way user interactions are handled. Selections and modifications made by a user are not directly reflected on the concrete view, they are serialized in XML and transmitted to a server which applies them to the document and broadcasts updates to the views. This organization has several advantages. XML documents coding selection and modification operations are usually smaller than the edited document and can be directly processed with a transformation engine which can adapt them to different representations. In addition, several selections or modifications can be combined into an unique XML document. This allows one to update multiple views with different frequencies and fits the requirement of an asynchronous communication mode like HTTP.

2008

Abstract Collaborative writing is the process of two or more people working together to create a common document. People can be distributed in time, in place and across organizations. They can share writing different kinds of documents. In this paper, we focus on collaborative writing of XML documents. XML documents must be validated via a set of constraints called DTD to be considered as consistent. In cooperative writing, shared XML documents are replicated on different sites.

Computers in Industry, 2006

The development of customisable working environments that not only manage information and communication, but also support the work processes of organisations is very important. In this paper we describe a collaborative approach that offers customisation in terms of the modes of collaboration that can be used alternatively in different stages of a project, i.e. synchronous and asynchronous, for two main classes of documents, textual and graphical. Moreover, by using a hierarchical structure for representing the documents, we offer a flexibility of working at different granularity levels. We highlight the fact that the real-time and asynchronous modes of communication use the same basic mechanisms for maintaining consistency in the collaborative environments.

Advances in Human Factors/Ergonomics, 1995

Cooperative editing is an important field in CSCW. Many editors have been developed or extended to allow several users to work simultaneously on shared documents. At the same time, an important research activity is carried out in the field of structured documents. Cooperative editing and structured documents share many common issues and it seems natural to take advantage of the advances in these two fields for constructing new tools that allow users to cooperate in producing complex structured documents.

Information and Software Technology, 1993

Group collaborative editing is an activity by which people geographically dispersed can edit the same document simultaneously. It makes use of computers and network communication to provide an interactive and convenient environment, so people can save much of their time and cost. We have developed a group collaborative editing system which not only allows participants to jointly view and process multimedia documents but also provides real-time interactive conversation facilities to let users feel realistic and friendly. This paper describes the concepts of group collaboration and the mechanisms of our system, h also presents the interface design strategy and the synchronization control method.

36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the, 2003

A number of real-time group editors have been developed as vehicles for investigating various technical issues in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Excellent as they are in serving academic purposes, those research prototypes are not (and will probably not be) widely used by ordinary users for "serious" group editing activities. The reason is primarily that they are generally not as powerful or usable as single-user editors that people are already familiar with. In this paper, we propose a novel approach which converts existing singleuser editors to group editors without modifying their source code. As a result, different editors such as Word and GVim can be shared by a group of distributed users to edit the same document simultaneously. Users can use familiar single-user editors for collaborative editing which are allowed to be heterogeneous. Towards this end we have been working on a research project called intelligent collaboration transparency or ICT to address related technical issues. Our work is novel compared to existing application-sharing systems especially in that it is able to interoperate heterogeneous single-user applications. We report our latest progress on this project.

2000

The recent proliferation of computing devices and use contexts demand equivalent diversity in collaborative applications. Our work on the DISCIPLE and Manifold frameworks supports the development of collaborative applications for these heterogeneous environments. Using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for the communication medium provides for the heterogeneity. Collaborators share the same data or a subset of the data, represented in XML, but view very different displays depending on their computing capabilities. Mobile users, for example, may view a more limited budget presentation than their collaborating colleague in the office. The Manifold framework transforms information to match the client's local capabilities and resources, yet maintains important content information. We used DISCIPLE and Manifold to implement a 3D to 2D collaborating environment and measured team performance characteristics in a simple object placement task.

We present a distributed Java application that allows several people, possibly at different locations, to edit the same file at the same time while exchanging comments on the changes they are making to the file. While still being a prototype, our application provides a vivid demonstration of the benefits of collaborative editing.