OIO-0.9.9: Images and XML-mediated Multi-Lingual Support

Structured content and fancy ontology may be good enough for some things, but they cannot replace pictures. This is especially true in the surgical domain (or trying to sell clothing/shoes to women :-), where microscopy, radiology, and photography are central to describing patients' clinical status. Thanks to Alexander Chelnokov, Ivan Somov, and Andrew Golovin, the OIO system is now a flexible and seamless tool for handling images in the context of other structured content.

OIO's plug-and-play web-form makes it possible to produce a customized data collection and analysis website in minutes. It puts the power of metadata driven information system within the reach of users who do not enjoy writing program code. Now, OIO-0.9.9 adds image handling and XML-mediated text/translation interchange for "Local Text", a click-and-translate localization/multi-lingual support module.

By tightly integrating image handling with the management of traditional structured content, OIO-0.9.9 uniquely supports the rapid creation of comprehensive clinical and research records. To use this new feature, one simply defines a form-item that has action="image". Once rendered in a web-browser, the image item allows uploading of images to an OIO Server. A minimum or maximum number of images for each form-item can be set, if desired (or can be zero to unlimited). Each web-form can support unlimited number of image-handling items in addition to other items. Thumbnail images are automatically created and stored. All images are stored directly in the file system for maximum efficiency and performance.

The second major enhancement is the addition of XML import/export capability to the Local Text Multi-Lingual system. The Local Text multi-lingual system was introduced in OIO-0.9.8 two months ago. With this upgrade, one can import/export word/phrase-lists (translation tables) as XML document so that they can be shared among installations. Collaborative construction of multi-lingual software infrastructure is now easier through the use of XML and the Local Text module's browser-accessible tools. Multiple lists can now be easily merged to form increasingly comprehensive translation tables.

The Local Text multi-lingual system has been the display engine for the OIO Library site at www.TxOutcome.Org since August 10, 2001. Karsten Hilbert has translated much of the OIO Library menu into German. Translation is done "in context" via the web-browser by simply clicking on a piece of text and editing/adding the translation.

For detail of the changes and bugs fixed: Changes/History

The full OIO-0.9.8 download is still only 570k and is available at: www.TxOutcome.Org or Sourceforge

You can get a free public access account from www.TxOutcome.Org to try it first.

The Open Infrastructure for Outcomes (OIO) System is powered by Python, Zope, Psycopg, Python Imaging Library, Usersniffer, and XMLDocument. Please see oio-license.txt for copyright and full-attribution of credits. PostgreSQL is the preferred database backend. The OIO-0.9.9 package includes versions of all of the above except Zope/Python and PostgreSQL.

Please contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions/suggestions.