A Model for Creating Interactive eBooks for eLearning
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- (a)
- Use of extensible markup language (XML) documents to describe the structure of an electronic book.
- (b)
- Representation of the functionality of the electronic book using attribute grammars.
- (c)
- Generation of the electronic book by processing the XML document using the attribute grammar.
2. Related Work
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Language-Driven Development
- The explicit definition of specific languages to describe different aspects of a software application.
- The implementation of said languages to automate the production of said aspects.
- It facilitates development and maintenance. This is achieved because the aspects addressed by the different languages are specified and maintained at a high level of abstraction and close to the domains of the problems that general-purpose languages cause.
- It facilitates the active participation of experts in the domain of the application in the development process. Since the languages that are designed are focused on mastering the problem, it is not necessary for experts to have technical knowledge of software development. This allows experts to understand, and even modify, the specifications.
- It allows one to configure and apply sophisticated and advanced design patterns and algorithms in final implementations. This is because in this approach, some of the code is generated automatically without intervention from the developers.
- It promotes reuse. Once a language has been defined for one type of application, it can be reused to implement similar applications.
3.2. Language-Driven XML Document Processing
- Defining specific markup languages that allow for the description of different aspects of the application to be developed by means of documentary grammars (DTD (a formal mechanism to represent the grammar of an XML language) or XML schemas).
- Description of the most relevant aspects of an application using XML documents that conform to the documentary grammars.
- Linguistic description of the processing to be carried out on said documents.
- Provision of processors for the defined languages, which, together with an appropriate application framework, allow the application to be automatically generated from the documents that describe it. These components are integrated into a core of the application.
- Generation of the application by processing the XML documentation. This phase can be seen as an effective instantiation of the application core to give rise to the application described by the documents.
3.3. Attribute Grammars for Processing XML Documents
4. Results
4.1. XLOP (XML Language-Oriented Processing)
- The semantic class that implements semantic functions as Java methods (mentioned above).
- The classes that make up the application-specific logic.
- The classes that configure the XLOP runtime environment. Among them is a generic lexical analyzer whose function is to go through the logical structure of XML documents and obtain a sequence of lexical components that will serve as input to the generated processor. Furthermore, this component connects with an API to XML documents based on SAX (simple API for XML, which is an event-driven online algorithm for parsing XML documents).
- (1)
- Writing a context-independent grammar specific to the processing task that characterizes the structure of the documents to be processed.
- (2)
- Writing an attribute grammar that specifies the processing to be performed using attributes and semantic equations (XLOP specification).
- (3)
- Implementation of the semantic functions used in the attribute grammar as Java methods (semantic class). This programming task will require specific application logic.
- (4)
- Building of the processor.
- (5)
- Testing of the generated processor with different documents. In the case of any modification being necessary, return to the previous activities.
- Processor maintenance, tuning or refinement tasks are simpler than if the processor had been implemented directly with a programming language. This is because the processor is defined at a higher level of abstraction (attribute grammar or XLOP specification).
- The approach advocated by XLOP allows one to structure XML processing applications in two layers connected by the semantic class: on the one hand, the application-specific logic layer (application-specific framework), and on the other hand, the linguistic layer of XML processing specified as an attribute grammar (XLOP specification that is translated into an executable implementation using the XLOP generator).
4.2. Proposal for the Production of the Interactive Fiction Electronic Book
- Analysis of electronic book technologies. The objective of this activity is to analyze the main technologies that are currently being used for the development of interactive fiction electronic books.
- Definition of an XML language to describe different types of electronic books with elements of interactive fiction. The objective of this activity is to obtain a markup language defined as a DTD or an XML schema that allows one to describe the content and structure of an interactive fiction electronic book.
- Transformation of the DTD or XML schema of the language to an equivalent non-contextual grammar. From the definition of the language obtained in the previous section, it will be transformed into an equivalent uncontextual grammar.
- Implementation of an attribute grammar that reflects how to process the description in the form of an XML document of an interactive fiction electronic book. For this, XLOP will be used as an auxiliary tool since it provides the necessary infrastructure to define an attribute grammar to process XML documents and generate the corresponding processor. In this sense, the attribute grammar will be implemented from the uncontextual grammar defined in the previous activity using the XLOP specification language. For this, a formalization process will be carried out following the established patterns of the logical process of an electronic book, adding the appropriate semantic equations and attributes to the non-contextual grammar that represents it and identifying the required semantic functions.
- Implementation of the specific logic necessary for the electronic book. During this activity, the corresponding semantic functions that arise during the previous activity will be implemented in Java, as well as all of the Java classes of the specific logic.
- Integration of the specific logic and the XML processing component generated from the attribute grammar. During this activity, the components created in the previous activities are integrated to produce the electronic book.
4.3. Analysis
5. Conclusions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
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Sarasa-Cabezuelo, A. A Model for Creating Interactive eBooks for eLearning. Future Internet 2020, 12, 223. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi12120223
Sarasa-Cabezuelo A. A Model for Creating Interactive eBooks for eLearning. Future Internet. 2020; 12(12):223. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi12120223
Chicago/Turabian StyleSarasa-Cabezuelo, Antonio. 2020. "A Model for Creating Interactive eBooks for eLearning" Future Internet 12, no. 12: 223. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi12120223