[DDI-users] Extending DDI, dealing with xml:lang and visualising DDI questionnaires!

[Samuel Spencer]

Hi all,

Since the lists have been quiet during the review of DDI 3.2, I figured I'd
try and liven things up with a few posts I've put up recently.

Firstly, parts 2 and 3 of the "How to Extend DDI using standard XML
technologies" have been posted,
http://bit.ly/P05VxK - "Part 2 - XSI Type and DDI" Looks at using xsi:type
to extend existing elements by adding additional elements and attributes
http://bit.ly/NnO9rv - "Part 3 - Picking the right approach to improving
the standard" Covers when each of the approaches should be used, and is a
scathing look at why DDI Notes need to be deprecated for the good of the
standard and the community.

Secondly, given the multilingual focus of DDI and many of its users, some
help when using XML:Lang attributes. After some research, I couldn't find a
reference for how to easily infer the correct xml:lang attribute value for
a given element - according to the XML spec, if the XML lang attribute is
absent it should be the value of the nearest parent. To solve this, I've
written up a trivial post with an Xpath to do just this here:
http://bit.ly/NRUl6W with a Github Gist breaking it down here:
http://bit.ly/Nx5oDb
If you just want the XPath to compute this value, its this, its this:
ancestor-or-self::*[attribute::xml:lang][1]/@xml:lang

Lastly, I've updated an open-sourced the software I demo'd at IASSIST2012.
Ramona is a collection of questionnaire visualisation tools that should
help demonstrate the power of DDI for survey design and delivery. The full
code is available on GitHub here: http://bit.ly/PnG2rx but just as a quick
demo are two results of the transforms that I've hosted
http://bit.ly/PnFsKl - This is a completed, and interactive XForms Survey
Instrument generated from DDI
http://bit.ly/PxMW0E - This is an interactive HTML visualisation of the
questionnaire flow, similar to a Flow Diagram as described by Donald Knuth
for programming logic.
Both of these are generated from a sample form that is include in the above
GitHug - The fictional "Australian Dog Survey" here: http://bit.ly/Q6B2bn

Thanks to everyone, and I hope to see you all in Bergen,
Sam.

--- Specificity is the soul of all good communication ---
--- When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box ---
Find out more about me: http://about.me/legostormtroopr
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