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Title: PDF Killer

• Appropriate Courses: COMP3760 (IS), COMP6703 (eSci), COMP8760 (CSci) ?, COMP8770 (eSci) ?, COMP8790 (SE)?

• Orientation: implementation (possibly some research)
• Status: proposition
• Student:
• Supervisor(s)/Client: Supervisor: Tom Worthington
• Research Area(s): information systems, doucment technologies

Description

Organisations commonly use PDF to produce printable electronic documents. However, PDF documents tend to be less efficiently encoded than HTML and cannot be rendered by web browsers. Web browser designers are producing a new version of HTML (HTML5) and there is the opportunity to request features for better print formatting.

Examine the requirements for formatting of common PDF documents, using papers in the ACS Digital Library as examples, and compare this with features in web standards and implementations. Draw up a list of requested features and test documents to demonstrate their use. Write a filter to convert ODF or OOXML documents to the proposed format. Write XSLT transformations (or similar) to allow the format to display in current browsers.

Powerpoint killer Optionally expand the project to provide a web based format to produce Powerpoint type presentations using a web browser. Propose additions to web standards to provide the features of Slidy, without the need for Javascript and while maintaining compatibility with the PDF killer format.

Requirements:

Students should have completed or be undertaking COMP2410 / COMP6340 (Networked Information Systems) and COMP3410 / COMP6341 (IT in e-Commerce).

Links and References

• Universal document format
• Web Browser Support for Print and Screen Presentations
• XML Document Formats
• Slidy