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Work Packages

Work Package: Tasks: Deliverables:
0. Project Management  
1. Requirement Analysis
2. Transformation
3. Metadata
4. Interfaces
5. Distribution
6. Testing and Validation
7. Information Dissemination and Exploitation  

The previous work packages are not strictly sequential.

WP1 should be reasonably short; apart from a few topics requiring a deeper analysis (Tasks 1.3-5), this phase is essentially meant to rapidly reach a good level of inter-operability among the different sites.

Most part of the work is based on the possibility to have at our disposal, and as soon as possible, large collections of documents encoded with semantic markup. One strategy is the import of material (e.g. journal articles) written in LaTeX. The development of a suitable LaTeX based authoring tool (Task 4.4) will need to begin immediately, as an appropriate semantic encoding in LaTeX has to be developed first. The delivery of the first prototype of the authoring tool is scheduled for month 18.

A more rapid way to get meaningful repositories of fully structured mathematical knowledge is by exporting them from the available libraries of Logical Frameworks and Proof Assistants (Task 2.1). The intelligence contained in the exported XML files should reflect the requirements defined in the previous work package, requiring a deep analysis of the markup model. After six months from the beginning of the project we plan to have a first prototype of the Exportation Module and a first draft of the Document Type Descriptor for thelow, logical level. This is our first Milestone.

At this point we may start the study of the intermediate format of the information, and the implementation of the stylesheets performing the transformation (tasks T2.2-3). This part of the work is expected to be essentially completed after one year (second Milestone). Since a strong feedback is expectedwith presentational issues, we plan to begin the development of presentational stylesheets around month 9. In turn, the need of rapidly have at our disposal good presentational engines suggests to begin their development as soon as possible (task 4.1).

In parallel with these transformation issues, we shall start the study and classification of metadata, and their concrete modelling.

Summing up, at the end of first year we plan to have:

  • a formal Document Type Descriptor of the intermediate level;
  • a bunch of stylesheet performing the transformation to intermediate representation, both for formulae and proofs;
  • a detailed report on metadata;
  • a first prototype model of metadata (in RDF format);
  • a prototype MathML-viewer.

During the first half of second year we shall perform, in parallel, four major activities:

  • study and development of presentational stylesheets, both for expressions and proofs, and automatic extraction of metadata (tasks T2.4-6).
  • architectural design and implementation of the consultation engine (task T4.2, requiring the metadata model), and of the functionalities for assisted annotation in natural language of the documents (task T4.3, requiring both the MathML-viewer, and a detailed description of the intermediate level).
  • overall architectural design and first prototype implementation of the distribution model (task T5.1-T5.2).
  • finalize the first prototype of a LaTeX based authoring tool (Task 4.4)

The second half of the second year is devoted to the completion of the previous tasks, and to their integration inside a single, compound application. Around this time we shall also start a detailed validation of the application, according to three pilot applications:

  1. Formalisation of a full undergraduate course in algebra or analysis for didactical purposes.
  2. Formalization of (part of) the process of loading, verifying and executing an applet into a smart card. This application will provide a case study close to both information technology (IT) industry and Computer Science research, where the presentation and layout needs are not exactly the same as in Mathematics. The example concerns the representation of different abstract state machines, transition systems, typing calculus, and program code. Such concepts are pragmatic use cases of the formal concepts that usually appears in security evaluations of IT products and Computer Science articles.
  3. Make maximal use of content marked-up articles in a solely electronic scientific physics journal. This will allow us to demonstrate the benefits of content mark-up for search, retrieval, and re-use of mathematical content, and user customisable content presentation. Several articles will be processed to test scope, functionality, and user friendliness of the authoring tool developed in Task 4.4. The tool will be refined and the mathematical semantics covered extended. The suite of articles will be used to show benefits of automated annotation and cross-linking between related mathematical concepts.

The last six months are mainly devoted to testing, debugging, validation, dissemination of results and exploitation plans.


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Last updated Fri Feb 2 17:12:21 CET 2007.
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