On 14 March 2014, Nico Kutscherauer, the Schematron developer of our partner company, published his project „Schematron QuickFix“. This open source project which is supported by the W3C extends the Schematron language by the possibility of defining QuickFixes. These QuickFixes help the author to independently fix Schematron reported errors without producing new ones.
What is the idea behind Schematron QuickFix?
Schematron has become a very popular language in the XML world. More and more publishers and other companies use Schematron in order to ensure the quality of their documents. The Schematron QuickFix project focuses on the handling of Schematron reports. What is to be done if documents are not compliant with the Schematron schema? Who is able to fix the reported errors?
At the moment, the companies have two alternatives:
- The author: He knows the context of the document. He is an expert in his subject and he knows what he intends with his content. But in most cases he is not very good in XML. In addition, he already committed the error! How shall he fix it correctly without producing new errors?
- A XML expert: He knows the XML syntax. In some cases, he can fix the error. But his working hours are very expensive. Moreover, there are many cases when he does not know how to fix the errors because he has to guess what the author has meant.
Because none of them is able to fix the Schematron reported errors, much communication is necessary to fix all errors correctly. So, the author and the XML expert need more time and the company loses much money.
By giving the authors the chance to solve the problems by themselves without producing new errors, companies can save much money and many nerves by using Schematron QuickFix. The Schematron report not only lists what the author did wrong. It gives him options – called QuickFixes – to fix these errors. The author can now choose which QuickFix is the right fix for the corresponding Schematron error. When he has chosen the matching QuickFixes, he can "execute" them.
Even though for many errors no perfect QuickFix can exist and sometimes the errors still have to be fixed manually, Schematron QuickFix can help to facilitate the everyday work of authors.
Further Information on the project can be found on the website of Schematron QuickFix.
