Michael Rees, Associate Professor, School of IT, Bond University, Qld 4229.
Email: mrees@bond.edu.au
Reusable document fragments, browser user interface, XML, web services, dynamic HTML editing component, distributed documents, document fraglet architecture.
Recent studies have shown that authors spend more time reading and annotating documents written collectively than creating original documents. Even when writing formal documents from scratch, the text is often a composite of fragments from other, existing documents. Web-based tools to support these reading and editing processes are presented in this paper. Particular emphasis is placed on reusing document fragments.
The author has been developing collaborative, document editing tools for some time using the web browser as the thin client but rich feature application. A new collaborative tool, DotNotelets, that leverages the rich dynamic HTML editing component built in to the most popular modern web browser is described. This DotNotelets tool allows documents to be constructed from reusable text fragments, referred to as fraglets. A simple but effective distributed architecture is discussed to support the tool built around the new technology of XML web services. The paper concludes by considering the mechanisms of such a document construction process for formal documents in business and the professions.
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