Towards an Interaction-based Integration of MKM Services into End-User Applications
This work solves integration and maintenance problems for developers and users of MKM services in applications like spreadsheets and CAD, but it is incremental as it builds on an existing framework.
The paper addresses extensibility challenges in the Semantic Alliance (SAlly) Framework for integrating Mathematical Knowledge Management services into end-user applications, presenting an augmented architecture to resolve these issues and enable document type agnostic services.
The Semantic Alliance (SAlly) Framework, first presented at MKM 2012, allows integration of Mathematical Knowledge Management services into typical applications and end-user workflows. From an architecture allowing invasion of spreadsheet programs, it grew into a middle-ware connecting spreadsheet, CAD, text and image processing environments with MKM services. The architecture presented in the original paper proved to be quite resilient as it is still used today with only minor changes. This paper explores extensibility challenges we have encountered in the process of developing new services and maintaining the plugins invading end-user applications. After an analysis of the underlying problems, I present an augmented version of the SAlly architecture that addresses these issues and opens new opportunities for document type agnostic MKM services.