[wiki] Advanced Input and Editing Scenarios and API

Collaborative Software Community Group,​




Could a Hemingway (http://www.hemingwayapp.com/) or Lurch (http://lurchmath.org/) desktop application or service interoperate with Web browsers?  How can browsers interoperate with such applications or services and render and stylize the output from interoperating with multiple component services simultaneously?




Platform functionalities include spelling and grammar checking API's, Windows (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh869853(v=vs.85).aspx), Android (http://developer.android.com/reference/android/service/textservice/SpellCheckerService.html) and OSX (https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/SpellCheck/SpellCheck.html), and HTML5 includes spelling and grammar checking (http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/editing.html#spelling-and-grammar-checking).




As applications like Hemingway and Lurch indicate, a means more expressive than @spellcheck (http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-html5-20121025/editing-apis.html#attr-spellcheck) could facilitate advanced input and editing scenarios.  In addition to indicating BCP47 language(s), one or more attributes, beyond @spellcheck, possibly utilizing TERMorCURIEorAbsIRI values can facilitate such expressiveness.  Towards discussing implementation, approaches include the registration of component services with platforms and/or browsers so that documents can access the services.  Documents can describe either (1) the content that users will be inputting, authoring or editing or (2) services and categories of services for content or (3) both.  In scenario (1), service components register services per content descriptions; in scenario (2), service components register described services.




Software such as Hemingway and Lurch are featureful, providing multiple specific services.  In addition to an extensible vocabulary, an ontology could be of use to facilitate indicating both specific content or services and entire categories of content or services in declarative scenarios.




With a new API, documents and browsers can utilize multiple component services simultaneously, processing document object model content, to generate and style output into content including, but not limited to: margin content, highlighted hypertext, outlinings, tooltips and context menus.











Kind regards,




Adam Sobieski

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