Single-access key player

1 General requirements

• Capable of embedding into common CMS, Wiki, or eLearning platforms (e. g., MediaWiki or Drupal installations, Giunti software, ILIAS, Moodle)

  Flex 3 is a good option, Flash being fully embeddable into server environments and widely distributed across client platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) in the most current version.

• Capable of running on the desktop (e.g. after downloading an application and a data set) without a current connection to the internet. This will be highly relevant for fieldwork outside of available or affordable Internet/mobile phone internet access.

  Possible with Flex

• Capable of being used over mobile phones.

  ETI has developed a separate mobile key interface written in PHP, because Flex 3 is not yet supported on mobile phones, see Development of mobile key application.

• Providing a multilingual user interface

2 Data sources and data structures

• The single access key player should be able to use different datasources:
  • XML documents, especially SDD
  • Wiki documents such as the SingleAccessKey Wiki template
  • Online access to databases.

• Supporting of displaying dichotomous & polytomous keys
• Supporting reticulated single access keys (a lead has more than one parent), i.e. the data structure is a Directed Acyclical Graph, not a Tree
• Supporting both statement style and question/answer style

3 Required user interface functionalities

• show the number of choices made so far
• show number of species left, perhaps relative to total number ("8 out of 230 left")
• ability to show the complete decision path including the option to return to any point (delete later decisions)
  • One option to do this in a web environment is to provide a list of decisions in small font above the current couplet.

Example: When at couplet 5 in the example used with the SingleAccessKey Wiki template, couplets 1,2, and 4 leading there could be displayed in small print:

1 Trees, shrubs, or woody climbers > 50 cm high

2 Leaves alternate

4 Leaves lobed

5 (4) Leaves pinnately-veined. Fruit an acorn.       Quercus robur L.

5       Leaves palmately-veined. Fruit fleshy. Small shrub       Blackcurrant Ribes nigrum L.
 

• Show pictures belonging to the leads in a couplet. Potential problem as pictures of different sources tend to differ in size!
  • Desired: Images should be displayed immediately together with text, and not requiring a separate user interaction (the latter is necessary in the first ETI FLEX prototype, preventing to compare the images for the alternative leads in a couplet directly).

• Supported hyperlinked glossary entries or definitions around multiple specific terms in each lead
  • Desired: Where an explanation link to glossary, wikipedia or other definitions is provided within a lead statement, upon clicking or hovering over them, a small popup Window should provide a preview, offering an option to open the definition in a full browser window, similar to how Wikipedia articles are handled in Google Earth.

4 Linnaeus II User Interface

To start of the discussion on how the user interface should look I have added some screen shots of the Windows version of the Linnaeus II single access player called "TextKey". Please comment on this, propose alternatives, but also notice that the first prototype is already due in August 2008, which leaves not much room for big discussions in this phase!

Gregor: The user interface shown above expects that only one image is available per couplet (as in Linneaus), not separate images per lead within a couplet (as in Frida). SDD supports both alternatives.

A lot of the required functionalities are already visible in the interface. The button "Decision Path" leads to the following window:

Marc: The interfaces are a bit old fashioned so it would not hurt to bring them to the 21st century. Please keep in mind that the style of the interface should match with the multi-access key player and the navigator.

Gregor: Although a separate window is possible, it should be investigated, whether a brief display of the decision path for better orientation can not be provided directly together with the ongoing process (e.g. in small script without images, opening in larger window with images if clicked). It is generally irritating, if user interactions immediately lead to a loss of context, without feedback whether perhaps the wrong option had been choosen accidentially. This is the case in both FRIDA and the first ETI prototype.

5 Partners involved

• UTCN
• BIKAM
• ETI
• GIUNTI
• JKI
• UNITS

6 Time table

TaskID	Priority	Task description	Deadline	Who is responsible?	Status	Relation with other task?	Comments
3.	High	Prioritize implementation of functionalities	Week 24	ETI, JKI	In progress
5.	High	Preparing SDD files and additional secondary data for Birds, Insects and Flora (UNITS) of Bulgaria	End of June	ETI, UNITS, BIKAM	To be started		BIKAM needs to be involved
6.	High	Development of software	End of July	ETI	In progress
7.	High	Testing and debugging software	End of August	ETI, JKI, UTCN, others	To be started

7 Issues

7.1 Introduction

When entering issues please enter your name and time (simply add 4 consecutive tilde character to let the Wiki do this for you when you save).

7.2 Working with SDD

• SDD: Within the TaxonName object, the scientific name is always also given as a general Representation/Label element. There is no way of distinguishing it from vernacular names. Adding something like lang="la" where "la" stands for Latin would be helpful, but there are problems with this as well. A better solution would be to introduce a special tag for scientific names. --Edwin 05-Jun-2008 16:17 CEST
  • We decided to use the language code "zxx-x-taxon" for the time being.

• SDD: The additional option to atomize ScientificNames within TaxonName was unclear, because example files were missing. However, this is supported in SDD (but not in Lucid, Delta, XPer2, DiversityDescriptions, etc.).

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