Monica Palmirani, one of the judges of our Legislative Data Challenges, recently alerted us to a new tool developed by the University of Bologna: the LIME Editor. This open source, web-based editor allows for the quick conversion of non-structured legal documents into XML, including Akoma Ntoso XML.
The tool combines a component-based JavaScript framework and a platform-independent, web-based, JavaScript HTML WYSIWYG editor. In many respects the clean interface resembles the word processing software many of us use on a daily basis. But if you look at the screen closer, LIME also provides a linked outline view of the document on the left and a contextual markup menu on the right side of the interface showing available Akoma Ntoso elements. This markup menu updates and changes as the user moves to other parts of the document.
LIME was built so that the user can customize the tool with various plugins and the user interface is available in multiple languages, including English, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. Best of all, LIME does not require the user to be an expert at creating XML. In fact, the tool enables users to correctly mark up documents in XML even if they are not familiar with a particular XML language. In a nutshell, to mark up a legislative document, all the user needs to do is identify the parts of the document (preface, heading, main body, etc.) and assign the correct labels to each part from the toolbars in LIME.
The University has provided LIME demos for three XML languages: Akoma Ntoso, TEI, and Legal RuleML and links to download the tool and the source code on the LIME website. You can also find contact information for the team members, including Monica Palmirani and the project manager, Luca Cervone, on the site.