Improving the Access to XML Contents of Large Electronic Publications

In this paper we present a technique to access the contents of large XML documents. This technique can be applied to domains where large amounts of data are handled, on condition that those contents only require to be updated in a scheduled or sporadic way. We have implemented it in a system, named ALEP (Access to XML contents of Large Electronic Publications). First, ALEP preprocess the XML document, then it is used together with DOM API. One of their advantages is that it can be integrated into any software for management XML electronic publications. We have compared ALEP with DOM and SAX API’s improving both, time and space measures, with large documents of size greater than 18 MB megabytes acceding to a hundred of XML elements.

Fresno-Fernandez, V., R. Martinez-Unanue, M. Paredes-Velasco, J. Urquiza-Fuentes, and J. A. Velazquez-Iturbide. “IMPROVING THE ACCESS TO XML CONTENTS OF LARGE ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS” In ELPUB2002 – Technology Interactions. Proceedings of the 6th International ICCC/IFIP Conference on Electronic Publishing. ELPUB. Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic: VWF Berlin, 2002.

Redesigning the Animation Capabilities of a Functional Programming Environment under an Educational Framework

Animation systems not only should be built on technical basis (e.g. a programming model for execution) but also centered on their user. This is particularly important in most current animation systems, which are used for educational use. WinHIPE is a programming environment for functional programming that provides visualization and animation capabilities for expression evaluation. It was designed for education, giving a simple interaction based on the office metaphor. In this paper, we present a systematic redesign of WinHIPE capabilities that takes into consideration three dimensions: a model of program execution, a model of program visualization/animation, and support to build and maintain animations. The last dimension is based on a metaphor of animations as office documents. In addition, Anderson and Naps’ framework is used to assess and refine the animation capabilities of the system for education. After this redesign, the usability of WinHIPE for educators and students has been enhanced in a systematic way.

Proceedings of the 2nd Program Visualization Workshop. DAIMI Report Series, 59-68

Electronic books for programming education: a review and future prospects

Programming is a suitable field to design electronic books with a laboratory component, where the programming task is exercised in the theoretical context provided by the book. The goal of the paper is to make a review of current electronic books for programming education and identify future lines of research. First, we review a number of software tools and electronic books for programming education in order to give a broad vision of technological opportunities in programming education. Later, a comparative analysis of such electronic books is made. Finally, based on this overview and analysis, we identify aspects that either are currently poorly supported or are a subject of active research, thus constituting potential areas for future improvement.

R. Martínez-Unanue, M. Paredes-Velasco, C. Pareja-Flores, J. Urquiza-Fuentes, and J. Á. Velázquez-Iturbide. 2002. Electronic books for programming education: a review and future prospects. In Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education (ITiCSE ’02). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 34-38. DOI=10.1145/544414.544426

Approaches to comprehension-preserving graphical reduction of program visualizations

Past research efforts on the educational effectiveness of software animations agree in the necessity of active involvement of users, i.e. students and teachers. However, one of the main obstacles is the technical difficulty to produce them. Our approach seeks to generate software animations analogously to the generation of documents in office applications. The availability of static visualizations allows the user to define animations friendly; thus, he/she can select the most relevant ones to illustrate meaningfully the algorithm. The selection is facilitated if (ideally) all the static visualizations are simultaneously shown to the user. This sets a novel problem: reducing the size of visualizations while preserving their comprehensibility. In this paper we describe the problem and identify the main difficulties. We think that there is no single solution to the problem. We describe several approaches to this problem, as well as our first, qualitative findings.

F. Naharro-Berrocal, C. Pareja-Flores, J. Urquiza-Fuentes, and J. Á. Velázquez-Iturbide. 2002. Approaches to comprehension-preserving graphical reduction of program visualizations. In Proceedings of the 2002 ACM symposium on Applied computing (SAC ’02). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 771-777. DOI=10.1145/508791.508941