This is a video on the storyboard for the project for this course. We here describe the word-plugin wich is the most important feature of our application:
1: We describe a paper plugin for word which will help scientists to improve the cohesion between related papers, and the speed of writing them.
We enter the familiar surroundings of MS word, and we add a small 'paper' view on the right, and a new 'paper' tab on the top. In the view all the useful tools for writing a paper will be presented. When no option is active, this view lists all the active papers.
We assume the standard layout of a paper, including title, author and keywords.
When the title is clicked holding the controll button, the plugin will search for related papers to that title, so the writer can access those papers quickly. The same goes for the keywords.
2: We call the current paper P1, relevant papers are shown in the right view. The user clicks on one of these papers and ,if not yet in the local library, that paper will be downloaded from the internet. A new window will be opened.
3: Assume this is a paper with title P5, written by A5. Control click on his name will show all the info we have about A5 in the custom view.
4: We close the window about the author.
5: Next we see the most recently active papers. An alinea of the text in paper P5 is selected with the mouse, and dragged to P1 in the list of recent papers.
6: This creates a quote in paper P1, together with a reference to P5.
7: In P1 again, from the 'recent' list, P2 is dragged into the text of P1, which creates a reference to P2, without any quote.
8: We now use the menu extension, the paper tab. We select the button 'status' and the options appear in the right view. Any state can be selected,
for example 'draft'. After this we click the publish button, which means we will send the paper in its current state to the website.
9: A publish window appears, where all info can be edited. The title, Author, keywords & abstract part are found in the paper by the tool, when possible.
10: The user has the option to select this data himself through the 'select' button near every item.
11: This select button takes the user back to the paper, where he will select the right part out of the text for example the 'abstract' part, and the button on the right view 'select as abstract' is clicked.
12: The publish window shows again with the edited info (abstract), and OK is clicked to finalize the upload. This item is also stored in the local library.
edit:
Here is the image used in the video:
21 februari 2010 om 11:46:00 PST
You should focus either on writing support or on publishing support: doing both is WAY too much to cover - the more so as you are a group of only two!
One of the drawbacks with the not-very-realistic drawings here is that I do not understand how the new tab interferes with Word: I don't think Word has tabs as the upper GUI control?
What does it mean to have a paper in the "local library"?
If I drag a selection of a paper, then you create a quote. If I drag the full paper, then you create a reference. This seems inconsistent to me...
If you are going to make information available on related papers, then why do you want to use the right-click actions? Why not just display the related papers in any case?
21 februari 2010 om 15:21:00 PST
Nice concept but the only thing that isn't totally clear to me is what exactly you can do on the website? Is it just a database with papers so the plugin can work or is the website also important? For example will people who make papers in latex also benefit from the website by manually uploading their papers?
21 februari 2010 om 16:28:00 PST
In response to prof. Duval: this plugin is destined for word 2007 and above, where the GUI is changed over 2003 and below, and all menu items are sorted under, what we named, tabs. So we just want to add another 'category' of menu items, under the collected name of 'paper'
on the select and drag: both a quote with a reference to the paper are made, in case one wants to quote another author. When just explaining something which is described in detail in another paper, only a reference would be prefered, so thats te reason for the 2 distinct types of linking another paper.
We chose to display the 'most recent papers' to show at all times, because after all its about building papers, not reading related ones. When a related one is needed, they can be accessed through the ctrl-click option, and the list of 'recent papers' will be replaced with related papers.
Local library is seen as the offline collection of the user, available at all times, where 'publish' is about storing it on the internet, as is the search option related to online
papers.
on glenn: website is primary purpose is as database, and we are focussing on the word plugin itself, as said in the course not trying to cover everything, so it's not described nor analyzed into detail what it exactly should and shouldn't do. But mainly its just a 'database viewer' such as mendeley. We already thought about latex etc, to extend the plugin to different text editors, so it can be broadly used. But indead its a good idea to mention a manual upload through the website, for people who are not writing their papers in word, we will take that in consideration.