Goals

The W3C needed a Web client to conduct various testbed

• Browsing and Authoring
• Code freely available
• Open architecture

The first experiment to be conducted was an implementation of CSS

Amaya, based on work done at INRIA was selected as Arena's sucessor

Architecture

Amaya is built on top of the Thot editing toolkit, and libWWW.

Document model

Document model (2)

Each element holds

• a list of child
• a list of attributes

Document interfaces

The Thot API contains approximately 200 functions:

• General: initialization, memory, errors, registry, ...
• Documents and schemas: open, close, create, remove, ...
• Tree: new, copy, create, insert, getRoot, getFirstChild, getLastChild, nextSibling, previousSiblings, getAncestor, ...
• Text: setText, appendText, insertText, deleteText, merge ...
• Attributes: new, attach, remove, get/setValue, getAttribute, nextAttribute...
• References: setReference, giveReffertedElement, ...
• Presentation rules: new, copy, attach, remove, get/setValue
• Views: openMainView, openSubView, closeView, zoom, ...
• Actions: software events triggered by the editor or UI
• Search functions: for type, attributes and references
• printing

Thot languages

The structure and presentation of Thot document are specified in "schemas" files

• defined using specific languages
• compiled
• loaded on-demand at runtime

Languages are available to describe:

• document structure
• document presentation (rendering and views)
• export filters

Amaya

Amaya add specific support needed for a Web application:

• HTTP access using libWWW
• Parsing of HTML documents, and export
• Web specific User Interface (navigation, links, CSS, URL and Title)
• HTML specific interfaces (H1, Lists, Links, views)
• Publishing of HTML file
• An small Amaya API is defined

Amaya-Java

• embbed a Java JIT (Kaffe)
• Use Jigsaw client HTTP classes

• allow extensions by Java classes using the Thot API

• ILU extensions are also available

Testbed implementation

• CSS

• Math-ML

Others

• PICS
• DOM (Document Object Model)
• WebDav
• XML
• HTTP-NG

Problems

• stability
• portability
• lacks frames
• table formating and CSS support are not perfect

Conclusion

• Amaya is an open environment for HTTP client testbeds
• Built on a structured document model
• Source availability, completely free
• Used sucessfully for demos