Supporting Multilingual Paths Supporting Multilingual Paths

on the WWWon the WWW

Unmil P. Karadkar, Luis Francisco-Revilla,

Richard Furuta, Frank M. Shipman III, Avital Arora

 

Texas A&M University

Walden’s Paths – Project OverviewWalden’s Paths – Project Overview

• Facilitates inclusion of Web-based information in the K-12 curriculum

• Most information on the Web is not suitable for use in classroom education

• Information needs to be contextualized – To suit the curricular goals– To highlight focal points for students– To present issues of interest

• Paths are annotated lists of Web pages

Walden’s Paths – Project OverviewWalden’s Paths – Project Overview

WWW Host

Web Page

Internet BackboneA Path

Walden’s Paths ServerWalden’s Paths Server

• List of Paths

• Path Summaries

• Links to author directories

Walden’s Paths ServerWalden’s Paths Server

• Annotation Frame

• Control Frame

• Content Frame– not controlled by the

Path Author– Following links– Caching of pages for

performance

Walden’s Paths ServerWalden’s Paths Server

• Off-Path traversal– Single click return to

path

• Guided exploratory learning environment

Catering to a Global AudienceCatering to a Global Audience

• Need to support Paths in different languages– Schools that teach more than one languages

• Need to support parallel versions of Paths– Widening the viewer-base– Paths as an aid in learning foreign languages

• Support for multiple fonts and parallel widgets

• Support for authoring multilingual Paths

• Users need not download any font faces• Microsoft (Web Embedding Fonts Tool)• BitStream (WebFont Wizard)

The ArchitectureThe ArchitectureServer Setup

Reader Setup

Author Setup

Remote Web-site

L1

P1 P2 Pn

L2 L2 L1 L3 L4

Published Paths

Fonts

Path Server

HTTP Server

Language Selector

Control Widgets

Save/Load Paths

PathAuthor

Local Paths

Publish Paths

Path Publisher

Author

Browser

Browser

Reader

Interface (PathAuthor)Interface (PathAuthor)

• Authoring in various languages and scripts– English– Spanish– Hindi

• Path and page information

• Master Paths

Interface (PathPublisher)Interface (PathPublisher)

• CGI Application

• Authors upload Paths to a Web-accessible location

• Currently available in English only

• Separation of Paths by language

Interface (Path Server)Interface (Path Server)

• Multilingual Interface

• Paths can be viewed by language

Interface – Interface – A page on the PathA page on the Path

• Page is available in the language of the Path

Interface – Interface – Another Page on the PathAnother Page on the Path

• Page is not available in Spanish

• Page from the default language (English) is displayed

IssuesIssues

• Technology– Nascent

• Minimal support and buggy products

– Server-specific• Installed Web fonts must specify valid servers for access

• Each Walden’s Paths server must create fonts

– Platform dependency (Windows)– Font availability

• The server must have access to the font used by the Web page

• Information– Most information is available in English– Use of Web-based translators yields unsatisfactory results

Future WorkFuture Work

• Support for collaborative authoring– Creating paths in multiple languages when an author

doesn’t know all of them

• Internationalization of Walden’s Paths

• User modeling and Personalization

• User evaluation of the multilingual Paths– Path authoring– Browsing

Walden’s Paths – Project OverviewWalden’s Paths – Project Overview

• Walden’s Paths as a part of larger Digital Library (NSDL)

• Support for virtual directories

• Path Manager– Web pages change frequently– Monitor and report web page changes