Sophie book format re-engineering
Last updated at 7:31 pm UTC on 21 March 2007
Mentor
(Google Account: -sriggins-)
Project Outline
Sophie stores the book data in a custom XML format that is tied closely to the objects, but this should be changed to use perhaps one of the standard XML markup formats. Seaside users should be able to load a small amount of Sophie code to enable then to create SophieBooks based on data from their application, and or people using other tools should be able to create Sophie Books by generating the needed XML. Sophie does contain an RTF reader, so RTF aware clients could also be integrated.
Technical Details
Sophie uses a XML read/writer in smalltalk that uses definitions that map XML tags to Sophie Objects and instance variables/methods. Sophie was designed so that going forward the book formats could change and the XML reader would cope with reading old formats and saving as new, thus converting older books as needed. Our project goal is to enable books 100 years old still to be usable by Sophie in the year 2108.
Benefits to the Student
Deep understanding of XML, document versioning issues, XML tuning.
Benefits to the Community
Ability for Seaside or other smalltalk appliations to easily create Sophie Books. Also for people using legacy application to create the required XML file from their data that to distribute Sophie Books, versus other non free formats like PDF.
