WALLOPWare Educational Software

Next Generation Labelling (development stalled in 2004)

In my IT career I quickly realised that whilst the end result of the labelling program is usable, the code behind it is poor. Essentially every labelling task is the same, but I wrote completely new code for each one. It took a very long time indeed. The new way of doing it relies on using XML to hold the information about the labelling task. Since the XML is standard, the end result can be produced in the same way each time. This greatly speeds up the creation of a labelling diagram and makes it possible for others to create their own labelling schema.

You can see this working in my technology preview of labelling a flower or the digestive system. I would be grateful for any comments on this approach. It is possible to do something similar for cycles of course, but I thought that I would start with labels. The technology preview does not yet have the matching label to function task, but that is in the pipeline.

XML

Why use XML? It is a fantastic way of storing data in a human readable form. Using XML I can give the set up of a diagram to someone else and concentrate on making the presentation of the labelling task as slick as possible. In time I hope to write an application that will create the XML automatically using a drag and drop interface, but even now, someone familiar with HTML should be able to look at my XML and create their own labelling task.