Project Suggestion: ETD and XML

• Number of people: 2-5
• Goal: To develop a mechanism for ETDs to be developed using XML and to document it for students to apply. To relate this to old instructions for LaTeX and SGML. To prepare information for the ETD Guide and to prepare a publishable chapter in a book on ETDs, as well as comprehensive support for VT students.
• Contact information: Tejas Patel (tepatel@vt.edu, a CS grad student working on this for independent study) Dr. John Eaton (Graduate School), Gail McMillan (Library), Marcos Andre Goncalves (mgoncalv@vt.edu), and the instructor, all at Virginia Tech
• Required background: interest in ETDs and XML
• Description: In order to facilitate preservation, and to aid searching and reuse, there have been several efforts to apply LaTeX, SGML or XML to the authoring of ETDs. For example, see UNESCO ETD Guide. This project involves reviewing these and developing and testing instructions so that students at Virginia Tech can create ETDs using XML. See coverage on related work at
  • Virginia Tech and NDLTD especially ETD-ML
  • Humboldt-University at Berlin, Germany
  • University of Montreal, Canada
  • XML.COM
  • XML School
  • Arbortext info on XML
  Students should begin by reviewing the current instructions for LaTeX for accuracy and currency, and doing likewise with regard to ETD-ML.

  Note that UNESCO is funding production of a Guide for ETDs, to include such information, so this effort will complement that work and allow students involved to be in touch with international teams with like interest.

• Company interested: Another phase or part of the project, that can be done by the same or a separate team, would involve working with Bruce D. Rosenblum; Inera Inc.; 815 Washington St. #3; Newton, MA 02460; 617-969-3053 (office), 617-969-4911 (fax); bruce@inera.com

  They have developed an application called eXtyles (http://www.inera.com). eXtyles is an integrated suite of editorial and XML tools for Microsoft Word. It was designed to solve the specific set of problems faced by publishers of academic and scientific papers who need to produce XML from author manuscripts written in Word.

  This project could involve Inera giving us their software, and our investigation of how it could help out students prepare ETDs using XML.

• Students previously involved: The following students worked on this in a Fall 2000 term project:
  • Akshay Sivananda, asivanan@csgrad.cs.vt.edu
  • Sunil Gopinath, sunil@cs.vt.edu
  • Sumedh Sawant, ssawant@vt.edu
  In addition, there was a student working on this in Fall 2000 for independent study: Dilshad Akhter, dakhter@vt.edu
• Students involved: The following students are working on this project:
  • Matthew Aguirre, maaguirr@vt.edu
  • Jiunnei Chen, jchenx@vt.edu
  • Scott Masterson, jmasters@vt.edu
  • David McPherson, dmcphers@vt.edu
  • David Tessendorf, dtessend@vt.edu