An object-oriented scripting environment for the WEBSs electronic book system

Abstract

This paper presents the scripting facilities built on top of WEBSS, an interactive system for the creation and consultation of electronic books. The sclipting environment relies on the same object-oriented software architecture used in the design of the WEBSs application, rendering it consistently integratcxi with the other components of the system. Scripts enhance the application in two ways. First, the ability to combine basic WEBSS actions allows users to easily define new high-level functions like, for example, the automatic creation of tables of contents and indexes. Secondly, the behavior of the objects that constitute an electronic book can be enriched by writing scripts that will be automatically executed each time a triggering object performs a specific action. The main originality of our scripting model resides in the fact that a script maybe attached not only to an individual object, but also to all objects of a specific class, or to all objects in a certain set.