OLD!!!    See also: Monk Workbench (a.k.a. Webclipse)

This document is meant to outline some of the (mostly obvious) design principles for the Monk interface implementation.

1. The interface is for selecting, browsing, rating, exploring and viewing
   • analyzing or storing data (which are the jobs of the back-end)
2. The interface should use the documented XML Messages for communicating with the back-end
   • in general, an effort should be made to limit the proliferation of methods in the proxy API, especially for viewing data (whenever possible the interface should be responsible for generating views from generic data sources, though limitations of the interface framework may require some flexibility - poor support for XSL, for instance))
3. The core interface should be primarily concerned with providing necessary functionality - additional functionality should be provided through modules/components/plugins that communicate with the core interface (and that can easily be ported to other core interfaces)
   • here's an example: the core interface should provide an easy and simple mechanism for selecting collections; a collections plugin could allow the user to visualize and explore characteristics of the different collections (time periods, number of authors and texts, etc.)