[tei-council] Desktop Roma App?

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Amit Kumar wrote:
> Pursuant to our discussions @ Kyoto about the need for desktop Roma
> app, Is that something council would
> like me to investigate? I understand that the priority is low in the
> list of action items, thus want to make sure
> that  it would be  some use.
I'd say it was quite important to keep moving in parallel on all fronts.
The opinion seemed strong that a 100% useable Roma was a prerequisite.
>
> I would be most interested to  know what Sebestian and other Roma
> programming nerds think? My 
not sure who the others are :-}

I think it would be great to have work start on the alternate Roma (aka
Byzantium),
if you think you can take it on.
> initial
>  inclination is for a Java webstart application that would work on the
> desktop and would be able to update
> itself when Internet is accessible.
not sure what a webstart application is, to be honest :-}

the main job of a Roma is to create an ODD customization file, and run
it through the
scripts which generate schemas or documentation out the end. Providing
the user with
information about what they can do involves accessing the TEI P5 source
(eg to get
lists of modules, list of attributes for an element etc). So you need a
local "database"
of some kind to query. webRoma does this by sending XQuery to an eXist
database.
When the build process  starts, that too needs access to the "database"
(which may just
be an XML file). The XSLT scripts work by either sending XQuery as
above, or
just reading the P5 source as an XML document.

So Byzantium has to have the equivalent of the eXist database lying
around, I suggest.
For the desktop Java app, I have imagined using Sleepycat dbXML, and
bundling that
with the app. Since it too accepts XQuery, it should `just work'.

Does this make sense?

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      

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