Project WAM

Web Authoring Tool and Browser

Amaya is an authoring tool with browsing features that makes the Web a uniform, interactive working space. With Amaya users may decide at any time to modify, copy/paste, or update a Web page displayed on their screen. They can then immediately re-publish a modified page, provided they have the appropriate access rights on the server. Users do not need to learn markup languages. They can create hypertext links just by clicking the target. They can copy/paste complex structures such as tables or lists from one Web page to another. When the copied part includes hypertext links, these links are preserved.

XHTML (HyperText Markup Language)

Amaya always generates valid markup. It also allows authors to control the XHTML profiles they use, and editing menus are adapted to the current document profile. The validity of the structure is checked when a document is downloaded and during the whole editing process.

Amaya includes full support for (X)HTML documents:

• All valid HTML elements and attributes are made available in the graphical user interface.
• A powerful transformation mechanism allows users to reorganize the document structure (for example, a sequence of paragraphs can be transformed into a list).
• Authors are assisted in managing links, not only when creating links but also when copying/pasting pieces of documents containing links.
• A powerful table editor provides commands to insert/copy/paste columns and rows, and to extend/shrink cells.
• The spell checker works with several dictionaries to check multilingual documents.
• Documents can be seen and edited through multiple views: formatted view, structure view, source view, etc.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

Amaya supports authoring of CSS style sheets:

• A simple mechanism allows authors to add style (fonts, colors, spacing, etc.) to Web pages.
• Users can test external style sheets and associate them easily with documents
• CSS files can be downloaded, edited, and published as easily as (X)HTML pages.
• The Show applied style command lets users know what style properties apply to a selected element and what statement in which style sheet sets each property value.

MathML and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)

Amaya makes it very easy to edit and publish MathML expressions and SVG structured graphics, as well as compound documents. It can edit XHTML documents that include SVG graphics with XHTML elements, and MathML expressions inside these graphics.

• The whole MathML presentation markup can be easily edited with a dedicated set of panels.
• The transformation mechanism applies also to MathML constructs. For example an existing construct can be surrounded by a block of parentheses.
• An input parser can generate complex MathML structures from a simple piece of text typed by the user. For example typing "a+b" produces <mi>a</mi><mo>+</mo><mi>b</mi>.
• MathML and SVG panels offer a convenient way to enter various constructs.
• The table editor is able to manage MathML matrices as well as HTML tables.
• The search/replace function and the spell checker work within all XML structures contained in a compound document (HTML, SVG, etc.).

XML

Amaya can process some well-known XML languages, such as XHTML, MathML, and SVG, but it can also edit generic XML documents (editing independently of any DTD or XML schema). This work is in progress, but Amaya already allows authors to edit the contents and attributes of XML documents, and to set their presentation by creating and applying CSS style sheets.

Templates

Amaya features a powerful template mechanisms that allows document designers to specify various types of documents in terms of the (X)HTML language. The document editor follows these templates to help authors to create rigorously structured documents.

Templates are defined in the XTiger language.

Annotations

Amaya supports Annotea annotations. Annotations are comments, notes, explanations, or other types of external remarks that can be attached to any Web document or a selected part of a document without actually changing the document in any way.

When the user opens a document, the annotations attached to it are also downloaded from one or several selected annotation servers or from the local work space.