1.5.1 Creating and structuring of electronical documents

The first step is the creation of data to be imported to the Agora system. The base is classically a digitised document. Fundamentally, other electronic documents, such as audio or video files or even pure metadata, can also be processed.

At first however - to explain the ‚classical’ version - we assume a folder with scanned image files.

Initially this folder containing imagefiles is unstructured, only an accumulation of images, pages 1 to n of the digital object.

The internal structure of the document must be worked out, so that the user can use the digitisation meaningfully. Additionally an indexing of metadata shuold complete the document description (I.e. ‚title’ of the document, ‚author’ ‚year’ and ‚place’ of pubication, etc.). Agora uses – as described above – the description language XML (Extensible Markup Language) for this purpose. XML enables one to map the structure of a document and to link this with his digitised document page. Agora offers its own tool for XML structuring – the Agora XML Editor. The programme facilitates simple creation of XML data using a graphic interface without having to directly work with XML code.

In order to be able to edit a scanned document, one first needs a general description, a definition of the document structure. This means, one first defines which elements and which attributes characterise the document being structured. This document structure is then saved in its own XML file.

According to this, this file distinguishes between the two fundamental structural sections.

1. (Document) - Element

2. (Document) - Attribute

Elements define the composition of the document. A monograph is comprised of, e.g. the elements ‚Introduction’, ‚Table of Contents’, ‚Chapters’, ‚Subchapters’, etc. A collection of magazines could be comprised of the elements ‚Magazine’, ‚Issue’, ‚Article’, ‚Paragraph’, etc. The combination of the elements can be done arbitrarily and any number of subelements of any structure depth can be created. For instance, a chapter can be furnished with any number of subchapters. The element definiton centres on the needs of the concrete documents. The following is an example definition of the element ‚Chapter’.

...
<element name="Chapter">
  <name xml:lang="de">Kapitel</name>
  <name xml:lang="en">Chapter</name>
  <attribute-ref ref="Title"/>
  <attribute-ref ref="Author"/>
  <attribute-ref ref="Illustrator"/>
  <attribute-ref ref="DocLanguage"/>
  <element-ref ref="Chapter"/>
  <element-ref ref="Remarks"/>
</element>
...

Chapter is set up so that it can be created with the attributesTitle, Author, Illustrator and DocLanguage. Remarks and again Chapter are designated as subelements. The result of defining this type, ‚Chapter’, is that any depth of subchapter structures can be created.

The attribute definition is congruous. Agora attributes can also be defined in any number or sequence. The execution is also oriented exclusively on the specifications of the user. The following is the definition of the attribute ‚Title’

...
<attribute name="Title">
  <name xml:lang="de">Titel</name>
  <name xml:lang="en">Title</name>
</attribute>
...

The result of the Agora XML Editor's work is an XML file that contains all recorded metadata (element and atttribute information) for the document together with the references to the image data in the document..

The document structure mentioned above is also the basis of the project-specific Agora database into which the created XML data is imported. The Agora database tables are constructed using the document definitions that were made.