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D3E Publisher's Toolkit v4.1.1

This version was developed by John Weatherley [jweather@ucar.edu] from v4.1 of the toolkit. It adds a Java Swing interface, a number of new features, and a redesigned user interface as a result of usability evaluations. This is currently being added to v5.0.

Documentation is all online, embedded in the interface. A Masters Thesis [PDF: 900K] on the design rationale behind it is available.

New feature list for v4.1.1

• Address book for authors, reviewers, and editors. Saves names and e-mail in an e-mail client style address book for easy retrieval.
• Ability to preview the HTML output as well as view the input file.
• Ability to preview the discussion header.
• Ability to view the parsing report that identifies possible missing references.
• Integrated help. Buttons in the UI next to each input field brings up a help page for that field.
• Online help. The user guide and help files are all accessible from the help menu in the toolkit. These help pages can also be viewed and printed from a standard web browser.
• Two pre-defined template styles are included in the distribution. A "Full Frames Format," which creates output with 7 frames and a "Simple Frames Format," which creates output with 4 frames. (As proposed in the "future work" section of my thesis).
• Users can now choose the input file from any location (not just from the "articles/in" directory) and output to any directory (not just the "articles/out" directory) using the standard file-chooser UI. This allows users the option to output directly to the web server, if their workstation has access to the web server file systems. The directories "articles-in" and "articles-out" are provided as defaults. (Note: there appears to be some bugs in the Java file-chooser UI when choosing a directory. It won't let you choose a directory after you have created a new one. To work around it the user must hit "cancel" then select the directory again).

Toolkit User Interface (v4.1.1)

(from the Masters Thesis)

The screenshot shows the primary screen in the prototype GUI. In this design, widgets for performing the editor's tasks are made most prominent. Item 4 in the figure is the Articles panel that controls the inputs necessary to configure and generate an individual document. This panel is visible at all times. Common tasks such as opening a saved articles settings, deleting and creating new settings follow standard convention and are found under the "File"menu (item 1). To aid in technically complex tasks, help buttons are available next to each widget in the panel (item 6). Clicking a help button brings up specific information and examples for input related to the entry. Item 5 shows the authors, editors and reviewers entry boxes. Clicking "Add" brings up a persistent address book that allows the editor to save and retrieve these contacts, reducing the need for repeated data entry over time and providing built-in error checking. Item 3 shows the output preview buttons and the document processing button, "Go." Each of these buttons as well as the "Save" button provides feedback to the user by becoming enabled when they are ready for use. An integrated HTML viewer is accessed via the "Full Article," "Discussion Header" and "View Input File" buttons, eliminating the need to use a secondary tool to preview the document and it's corresponding output. The "Input File" and "Output Folder" are selected using a standard file chooser interface, replacing the simple text entry interface in the previous toolkit.

The prototype toolkit clearly segregates each user role into separate UI areas. Item 4 in the Articles panel, allows input for the editor. The "Publication" menu seen at item 1 provides access to the system administrator's preference panel. The web site designer modifies a set of templates and GUI configuration files that are in the "custom-templates" folder at the same directory level as the toolkit executable. In this way, all tasks that are not related to preparing documents are moved away from the editor, simplifying their task.

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