ConsultationXML
ConsultationXML is an app we produced for the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills. It’s designed to convert Consultation documents, in PDF format, into XML — so that they could be imported into other tools to produce web versions, commentable documents, questionnaire widgets, or whatever else people think of in the future!
The app analyses PDF document structure and automatically derives some basic XML. That XML is then presented in an AJAX driven web-based editor for staff to add markup to the XML document, producing a rich, semantic XML. The app can render the document as HTML, and provides the XML for use in other applications.
In collaboration with the client, we released ConsultationXML as open source software for everyone to use and improve.
What Dextrous Web did
- Plan
- We discussed the initial idea with the client and designed the application from the ground up
- Design
- Produced the site’s look and feel, structure and iconography
- Build
- Implemented the site using PHP, integrated numerous open-source XML and PDF processing tools
- Support
- We host the sandbox for the application (where people can experiment) and also host the repository for the open-source project
Visit the site
Please do visit the site and have a look around.
We'd love to know what you think, if you'd like to tell us.
