Re: [jats-list] eLife lens, XML and JSON

Subject: Re: [jats-list] eLife lens, XML and JSON
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:27:59 -0400
Ian,

Thanks for posting this interesting report.

I am curious about a few details you leave out:

1. How are you getting from your XML to your JSON?

2. How is the JSON modeled, constrained and validated? ("In the
application" is a perfectly good answer; I understand a system like
this can work without any formal external specification, at least up
to a certain point.)

3. Do you have plans to (re)serialize the JSON in other forms for
consumers other than web browsers, or will you go back to the JATS XML
for that? In particular, do you have ways to capture back any
information added (such as annotations) in the JSON layer? Or is that
all for the future?

Kind regards,
Wendell


On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 8:24 AM, Ian Mulvany
<i.mulvany@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Last week we launched a new way to layout articles online -
> lens.elifesciences.org.
>
> We discussed XSLT transforms from base XML, vs going with a
> converstion to JSON. In the end we opted with doing an XML to JSON
> conversion, and then feeding that JSON to a single page web app.
>
> The converted JSON files are hosted on an s3 bucket, and served statically.
>
> In this message I wanted to cover a couple of the reasons why we
> followed this route. This is not a claim that our route is better than
> another route, it's purely as an FYI for the people on this list. It
> relates loosely to JATS, as JATS is the source format, and this
> application should be seen as an application built on top of that
> really great platform.
>
> - We had a good set of tooling to hand based on JSON, as we were
> working with the developer behind substanc.io
>
> - We wanted to be able to serve the files statically, and allthough
> you can do this with XSLT transforms in the browser, we judged that
> working directly with JSON was going to be easier for us, it turned
> out to be pretty good.
>
> - We liked making relationships of interest to us in the document
> explicit through a set of annotations, rather than leaving them as
> implicit relationships encided in xref nodes.
>
> Once we picked this route hving those explicit relationships in the
> JSON allowed us to iterate on the front end very quickly. The tool we
> launched went through a large number of front end iterations.
>
> - Ian
>



-- 
Wendell Piez | http://www.wendellpiez.com
XML | XSLT | electronic publishing
Eat Your Vegetables
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