Labnotes » Best practices for implementing CPTP 1.0 in HOA deployments

Human-Oriented Architecture is a computer systems architecture style for enabling enhanced collaboration between human resources, inside the Enterprise and outside.

HOA encapsulates point-to-point, pub/sub and hub-spoke topologies. It incorporates dynamically driven applications and static content. It leverages synchronous messaging channels and asynchronous message delivery agents.

A key component of any successful and reliable HOA deployment is the ability to leverage micro-content exchange patterns, and CPTP plays key role in achieving that capability in a scalable manner.

CPTP, currently at version 1.0, traces its roots back to CUA (1987), and builds on a variety of HMI standards developed by major industry players.

In this article we provide five best practices for using Copy & Paste Transport Protocol 1.0 in your application:

Text should always appear as text. CPTP allows for full, partial, and transformative extraction of textual units. However, current implementations are only able to interoperate with producers that provide textual content types.
Do: Use text, possibly intermixed with textual markup, such as HTML and/or XHTML.

Do not: Use images, binary formats, binary formats encoded as XML, binary formats relying on rendering plugins.
The address bar should always point to the contents/actions in front of you. CPTP allows for the exchange of content units, however, when dealing with dynamically generated content and interactive applications, you will want to leverage CPTP’s capability to exchange page pointers, aka YouAreEl.
Do: Use URLs liberally and distribute content and functional units across distinct URL values.

Do not: Obscure navigation by hiding end-pages inside frames. Note: version 2.0 of the Frames in HTML specification (aka AJAX) degrades worse than version 1.0.
Navigation is different from action. Version 1.0 of CPTP covers the extraction of navigation target, but has no provisions for supporting action targets. Separate according to use case.
Do: Use links for navigation and forms/buttons for actions.

Do not: Use forms/buttons for navigation, incorporate flashy technologies that do not distinguish between the two.
Semantics transpose better then presentation. CPTP promotes a loosely coupled architecture, as such, message producers and message consumers operate under independent, unbound contexts. Message producers should take this into account.
Do: Use semantic markup to convey meaning, for example, strike and blockquote.

Do not: Use presentational markup that depends on context for proper rendering, such as, font element or style attribute.
Organization and flow of information aide in task performance. CPTP implementations vary in their capabilities, however, while all are able to select continuous units of text, a large majority is unable to cope with excessive fragmentation and overriding behavior. Organization of text will decrease task performance time and increase rate of task completion.
Do: Let the text be.

Do not: Use excessive positional and floating units, layers, tables for non-tabular data, behaviors initiated by hovering or clicking on text.