Emdat uses Internet Explorer as the base platform for hosting our transcription solution.  A web browser, by its nature, isn't usually adept at producing a document suitable for printing.  Unfortunately, transcriptions usually require specific formatting needs that are beyond the base level of support a browser gives us when printing.  Additionally, editing functionality is needed when reviewing transcriptions.

To resolve both of these issues, we created the Emdat Runtime Components.

The runtime components are comprised of three components - a printing component, and editing component and a spell checking component.  The printing component allows us to manipulate the output of a document to override margins, cause transcription to paginate better, and obtain other controls over print output that isn't directly exposed in the IE browser.

The editing component simply gives us a way for users to edit transcriptions, including Emdat-specific add-ins designed to augment the transcription process (such as supporting template lines and qualified text).  Finally, the spell checking component provides spell checking functionality to the editing component.

The editing and printing components are based on a Microsoft foundation - the base class of the components starts with the Internet Explorer web browser control.  We have taken these controls and added functionality to them, linking into back-end classes to get greater control over the system.

The spell checking component is an add-on control, and is the same as used in InScribe.