My immediate takeaways after completing the first assigned project are likely the intended ones. The strict structuring of XML provided an ideal means of making explicit the context and weight of each sentence. I began the project with an understanding of these implications however, they were made painfully more clear after rereading the project guidelines once completing my annotations.
As I had begun my project without the word count restrictions in mind, rereading the instructions necessitated cutting several sentences from each of my entries. Although such a realization tastes like sour lemonade when the alternative is going to bed, the process heightened my understanding for the economy of words. Tailoring the delivery of the annotations to fit these constraints without sacrificing meaning was an important, and dare I say, even a gratifying step in the writing process.
In hindsight I think the schema’s structure for source/author background could have had a more open definition. The running definition placed an emphasis on providing credibility for the source/author, that I believe was perhaps overstated. Attempting to both hone in on the chops of the source/author, in addition to giving a general idea of the goal of the paper — without treading into the summary section — felt somewhat unnecessary.
Another uncovered area is that there were no restrictions in place on mixing and matching different citations styles. During my project I (regrettably) used a mix of APA and IEEE. Although I didn’t think about consolidating all sources under a single citation style, I assume that there should be a homogenous method of citation, and mixing and matching wouldn’t be permitted. Or maybe I’m wrong about that, hope so!
Oxygen as a development suite seems to have all the nuts, bolts and autocomplete features I would want from any IDE. Organizing future projects using Oxygen seems like a fitting way to leverage XML to structure future writing assignments.
