| A Hypermedia Approach to James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" | | BIBAK | 3 | |
| Risto Miilumaki | |||
| The application consists of the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" chapter of James
Joyce's last novel "Finnegans Wake" (1939) and the manuscripts and French and
Italian translations of that text published in Joyce's lifetime. Included is
also the gramophone reading by Joyce of the last three pages of the chapter,
and facsimiles of the corresponding manuscript pages. A hypertextual and
hypermedia approach is well suited to demonstrate the development and the
complexities of the text and help the reader better grasp the subtleties of
Joycean art. An electronic medium would also be a flexible alternative to
traditional, heavy editions of classic texts. Keywords: Electronic publishing, Literature on-line | |||
| DynaText at Hypertext'93 | | BIBA | 3 | |
| Gregory Lloyd | |||
| The Problem: Navigating information online: providing effective features and
visual cues for navigation information in a new medium that takes advantage of
familiarities with traditional printed information access paradigms.
What Was Done: Automatic hypertext Table of Contents generation from document hierarchy elements. Inline "hot-text" navigation elements defined to replace printed footnotes. On-the-fly text formatting. Navigation history journals to provide sense of document "locality" online and to support task-oriented navigation (CBT). Why the Work is Important: DynaText is the only online information retrieval product to take ISO-compliant SGML data from arbitrary DTDs as the direct input stream. Thorough knowledge of document structure semantics provides superior information delivery capabilities which far outpace "page-flipper" models. Demo Illustration: The DynaText Demos (2) show several interesting and powerful features: - Fast indexing of raw SGML data for online retrieval - Full-text search including boolean, proximity, and document "structure aware" searching - Inline and Table of Contents hypertext generation and navigation. - Extensive GUI customization capability | |||
| A CD-ROM Version of "Who Built America" | | BIBA | 4 | |
| Alexandra Fischer | |||
| In the past, American history has been the exclusive domain of a small and
specialized group. Primary documents are often seemingly impossible to access,
making it difficult for the non-professional historian to analyze source
material and draw their own conclusions. Voyager's CD-ROM version of Who Built
America directly confronts this problem by removing the filter of the historian
and allowing the user to actually participate in the process of writing
history.
Voyager, with the full cooperation of the authors, has turned one section of the original Who Built America textbook by Steve Brier and Roy Rosenzweig into an Expanded Book. Voyager's version allows the user to not only read the original text (covering the period from 1874-1914), take notes and mark pages (as one would with a traditional book), but it also gives the reader access to the primary documents used by the authors when writing Who Built America. Excursions take the reader to a group of primary documents attached at relevant points in the text, with new texts for each excursion that provides additional context for the documents. The CD-ROM includes 5000 text documents, 600 photographs and illustrations, 75 audio clips (including many archival recordings), and 20 archival film segments (including an entire ten-minute film, The Great Train Robbery). The increased indexing capabilities of the CD-ROM version of Who Built America allows the user easy access to the text and attached documents. For example, throughout the text the user can easily find out the number of times a word appears as well as locate all of its occurrences. The excursions can be accessed either through a reference in the text or directly through a primary document index. Town names are annotated with an interactive map attached which allows the user to visualize the patterns of American settlement. And there is a timeline organized according by year and category (e.g. politics, arts, economics, etc.) which provides the user with a more general perspective of American history. Who Built America is important because it provides a non-traditional approach to American history, both in the original text and the CD-ROM format in which Voyager presents it. This is the first time that primary documents have been fully integrated with a historical analysis. | |||
| Chimera: Hypertext for Heterogeneous Software Development Environments | | BIBAK | 4 | |
| Ken Anderson; Jim Whitehead | |||
| A major characteristic of modern software development environments (SDEs) is
heterogeneity. SDEs are composed of diverse object stores, user interfaces,
and tools. The benefits of hypertext in organizing and browsing the immense
amount of information stored in SDEs appear obvious. Yet these benefits cannot
be realized by hypertext systems that attempt to "control" the environment they
are placed in. This control manifests itself in various restrictions, such as
requiring all data (both application and hypertext) to be stored in the same
database, or requiring a single user interface for hypertext services across
all tools.
Chimera is a hypertext system which attempts to provide hypertext functionality for heterogeneous SDEs in a minimally intrusive fashion. In Chimera, anchors are associated with views of objects, rather than directly with the objects. This has the potential of allowing a complete separation of hypertext information from application data, as well as having anchors be view-specific (consider, e.g., anchors on a Petri-net, which has both a textual and graphical representation). Chimera hypertext anchors and links can be created on views of objects displayed by viewers in separate processes. Links can be established on two or more anchors on the same or different views. Since our hypertext information leverages off the concept of a view, links between objects stored in different databases are easily supported. The context of this demonstration is the support of a software maintenance process for a flight simulator. The Chimera demonstration illustrates the traversal of links between anchors in graphical views (the flight simulator's instrument panel), word processing documents (as supported by FrameMaker), and requirements documents (as supported by a graph-based tool), all implemented as separate viewers. The demonstration also illustrates the creation of anchors in each of the available viewers, and the creation of links between these anchors. Keywords: Heterogeneity, Hypertext, Software development environments | |||
| PassageWays: SGML Production & Document Management | | BIBAK | 5 | |
| Robert J. Glushko; Bryan Caporlette; Daniel Chang | |||
| PassageWays is an SGML-based document management and production system that
supports the automated conversion of information into SGML and the subsequent
assembly of SGML into hardcopy and online documents. It provides
object-oriented configuration and version management, automated SGML conversion
and build environments, graphics conversion, verification and validation
utilities, workflow and workgroup management, graphical and command line user
interfaces, and integration with other software applications.
PassageWays abstracts the complexity of SGML, file systems, format conversion tools, and other technology to simplify the creation, management, and production of structured information, while its X/Motif GUI gives information producers an automated user-friendly desktop. PassageWays is completely open, and does not assume any single set of development or delivery tools. It can be used to produce online books in a variety of formats, such as Silicon Graphics' IRIS InSight, Electronic Book Technologies' DynaText, and Bellcore's SuperBook. It can incorporate conversion software from Avalanche Technology, Data Conversion Laboratory, or other source. Native SGML authoring using ArborText and conversion to SGML from FrameMaker can peacefully co-exist. The conversion of non-SGML formats to SGML is aided by a "Document Debugger", which invokes the appropriate non-SGML word processor at the position in the source file that causes an conversion error. Keywords: SGML, Document management, Format conversion, Workflow, Document "debugging" | |||
| An Environment for Hypertext Application Engineering (ENHANCE) Based on Experiences Gained in ESPRIT Project HYTEA | | BIBAK | 5 | |
| Klaus Meusel | |||
| Technical approach: The demonstration shows a hypertext generator plus
targeting tool for electronic catalogs and point-of-sales /
point-of-information systems. Markups are added to existing linear material,
so that text and graphics can be compiled into a system-independent
intermediate format. Standard systems like FrameMaker or ToolBook then can be
used for automatic targeting. During the demonstration, we use the target
system ToolBook, together with MS Word for adding the markups. The compiler is
written in C++. ToolBook is hooked to the open ENHANCE environment by a few
scripts implemented in OpenScript.
Our benchmarks: Within one or two days, authors can design and implement high-quality hyperdocuments of about 500 ToolBook pages. The compilation and automatic targeting process for 500 pages with text, graphics and links takes about 5 minutes. The theoretical background: The approach is based on HDM and the ESPRIT project HYTEA. The idea is to keep hyperdocuments consistent and to reduce authoring costs by authoring on an abstract, global level (authoring-in-the-large). By focusing on a special class of applications, the general concepts of HYTEA were transformed into our industrial environment. After instance specification for a predefined schema, the following HDM objects are created automatically: - entities - applicative links - structural links To improve the quality of the applications, an extra effort was put into the professional design of the user interfaces. The demonstration will show the authoring process, compilation and final hyperdocuments. Issues on hypertext interface design (corporate identity, screen layout, use of a grid, typography, etc.) can be discussed by navigating through the running applications. Keywords: Model-based hypertext, Structural approach, Cost-result ratio, ToolBook
targeting, HDM | |||
| The Microcosm Link Service: An Integrating Technology | | BIBAK | 6 | |
| Wendy Hall; Hugh Davis | |||
| Microcosm has been used extensively over the last two years to develop a
number of applications that demonstrate its capabilities as an open hypermedia
system and its ability to provide a link service across different types of
application packages. This demonstration will show some of these applications,
chosen to illustrate the capabilities of the system. In particular we will be
demonstrating the use of Microcosm with the 3D-modelling package Autocad, to
show how the link service can be applied to packages of this nature and also
how a 3D-model can be used as an interface to a set of hypermedia documents. Keywords: Link service, Open system, Multimedia, Integration, 3D | |||
| DHM -- A Dexter-Based Hypermedia System | | BIBAK | 6 | |
| Kaj Grønbæk; Jens A. Hem; Lennert Sloth | |||
| DHM is a cooperative hypermedia system supporting users' navigation in and
editing of shared materials. Cooperation support includes long term
transactions, flexible locking and awareness notifications based on OODB
technology. The hypermedia functionality fulfils the Dexter Hypertext
Reference Model, including: Multi-headed (n-arity) links with bi- and
uni-directional traversal. A variety of composites being used for TableTops,
browsers and collecting results from simple queries. DHM exists in several
variants, including a combined Unix(Sun)/Mac configuration supporting cross
platform sharing of hypertexts. DHM is based on a platform independent object
oriented framework for building Dexter model compliant hypermedia systems. DHM
is also an open hypermedia system allowing integration of third party
applications. Keywords: Cooperative hypermedia, Dexter model, Open architecture, Object oriented
development Framework | |||
| The Artifact-Based Collaboration (ABC) System | | BIBAK | 7 | |
| Kevin Jeffay; John B. Smith | |||
| ABC is a multi-user hypermedia system intended for distributed collaborative
groups. Novel features include the following:
* a data model based on graph theory, conservatively extended to meet
hypermedia requirements, * a scalable data store that is implemented in a distributed architecture allowing data to be stored in multiple locations and moved among locations, * an open architecture that permits users to incorporate existing applications into an ABC environment, * a general layer of infrastructure that permits any application to be conferenced (shared) over the network. We will demonstrate several users working on the same hypermedia structure both independently and collaboratively. Keywords: Distributed hypermedia, Computer-supported collaborative work | |||
| Navigational Search in the World-Wide Web | | BIBAK | 7 | |
| Reinier Post | |||
| The X-Mosaic World-Wide Web browser, developed at NCSA, is quickly becoming
the most popular interface for WWW hypertext documents, Gopher and WAIS
databases and other sources of information, available on the Internet.
X-Mosaic offers a point-and-click interface for hypertext documents and a keyword search interface for Gopher and WAIS databases. Keyword searching is not possible in WWW documents, while following hypertext links is not possible in the searchable (index) nodes of the databases. We augmented X-Mosaic with a navigational query algorithm for hypertext, providing keyword search at the client side. This is seamlessly integrated with the server-based keyword search for Gopher and WAIS databases. The new interface makes X-Mosaic a much more effective tool for finding information in the Internet. Regular expression search and the search for multiple keywords are currently available. Searching is time consuming and can therefore be limited by means of several parameters. Future plans include client-caching to reduce the network load caused by the retrieval of documents over the Internet. Keywords: Navigational search, Search-by-browsing, World-Wide Web, Information
retrieval, Hypertext search | |||
| Using World-Wide Web Hypertext as a Generic User Interface | | BIBAK | 8 | |
| Steve Putz | |||
| I have been experimenting with World-Wide Web (WWW) at Xerox PARC to provide
a generic user interface to a variety of information sources and services. One
example is a World Map Viewer which utilizes the ability of WWW hypertext
documents to include images along with formatted text and hypertext links.
For the Map Viewer application, links embedded in an HTML document are used as controls allowing the user to change map rendering options (e.g. pan, zoom, level of detail). Additional user input can be obtained via the search keyword capability provided by WWW browsers. The HTML format and the HTTP protocol are in effect used as a generic user interface tool kit to provide not only document retrieval but a complete custom user interface. Links in each Map Viewer document (with labels such as "Zoom In") have URLs corresponding to different map rendering parameters, allowing the user to modify the map image by selecting the links. The view can also be modified by selecting on the map image itself. Users may interact with the Map Viewer using any WWW browser that supports in-line images in HTML documents, such as the NCSA Mosaic client developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The significance of this application lies in the ease with which the server was created and the ease with which it is made accessible as a network service to users throughout the world. In the first four months it has been available on the Internet, the Map Viewer server at Xerox PARC has received over 100,000 requests from 5,600 users from around the world. Keywords: WWW, Hypertext, User-interface, Map | |||
| HyperWriter 4.0: A Hypermedia Architecture for Diverse Applications | | BIBAK | 8 | |
| J. Scott Johnson; Brian C. Giedt | |||
| NTERGAID will be demonstrating the HyperWriter family of hypermedia
authoring tools including HyperWriter 4.0, HyperWriter for Training and the
HyperWriter AutoLinker. Three key aspects of HyperWriter 4.0 that will be
demonstrated are the HW-Basic internal scripting language, the HyperWriter 4.0
text retrieval engine, and a new system for formatting and graphically
presenting both rich text and tables. The HyperWriter 4.0 text retrieval
engine integrates full text retrieval capabilities with HyperWriter's native
hypertext linking as well as extending the text retrieval facilities into the
hypertext arena. Additionally, several real world applications of HyperWriter
will be demonstrated including online documentation, interactive training and
using HyperWriter as a hypertext help system. Also demonstrated will be an
early version of HyperWriter for SGML -- a SGML to hypertext delivery
environment using the Omnimark SGML parsing engine. The demonstrations will be
conducted by J. Scott Johnson and Brian C. Giedt, the designers of the
HyperWriter system. Keywords: Hypermedia authoring system | |||
| The Philadelphia Project: A Hypermedia Application in Theatre History | | BIBAK | 9 | |
| John R. Wolcott | |||
| The Philadelphia Project is a hypermedia application which manages complex
textual and visual data relating to the development of the city of Philadelphia
and the growth of the professional theatre in the United States between 1794
and 1835. What distinguishes The Philadelphia Project is its design to
accommodate various learning styles and needs: it addresses both student users
whose goal is to learn generally about the Philadelphia theatre and its role in
the city's cultural life, and experienced scholar-researchers who wish to
examine directly the primary textual and iconographic data. The centerpiece of
the database is a to-scale 3D computer model of America's first professional
theatre, the Chestnut Street, which serves as a gateway to associated textual
and pictorial information in the database.
In conjunction with the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, a laser disk has been prepared with hundreds of examples of historic clothing and accessories. The disk also contains performances in the style of the early Federal period, and examples of actors performing in 19th century settings, created through the use of video chroma-key and a large theatre model from the period. Keywords: Hypermedia, Higher education | |||
| A CAI System for Linear Algebra Based on "World Wide Web", Xmosaic and a Few Special Purpose Programs | | BIBAK | 9 | |
| S. Arnesen; H. Bjar; T. Gulliksen | |||
| Undergraduate mathematics education is one of the factors limiting the
number of students our university can accept. Demand for higher education, is
both large and increasing, and only limited resources are available for
building new universities. Several alternative paths are being investigated in
order to increase the productivity of the existing universities. One of these
paths is Computer Aided Instruction.
Our objective was to see if it was possible to create a CAI-system that actually helps students while using open standards and free software making it possible to give a large number of students access to the system at a relatively low cost. The tools we chose to use was the SGML based HTML markup language for hypertext documents, the Xmosaic browser for HTML-based World Wide Web documents developed by the NCSA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We extended HTML to allow us to include formulas from TeX and plots and animations from Mathematica. Perhaps more interesting is the special markup introduced for pedagogical elements such as explanation of concepts, revealing of hints, and gradual revealing a document. The initial courseware is structured as reviews of previous exams. Since reviews of previous exams is a widely used pedagogical method, it lessens the number of new concepts the teachers has to learn. A teacher can directly use her pedagogical skills instead of first having to develop into a interface designer. A relatively simple extension to the HTML language can be used as a pedagogic markup language, encoding concepts such as hints and stepwise disclosure of a solution. The courseware produced using this tool is in a format easily accessed by the World Wide Web protocol, thus making it simultaneously available to a large number of users in an heterogeneous internet environment. Keywords: WWW, Linear algebra | |||
| World-Wide-Web Hypertext in Physics Research | | BIBAK | 10 | |
| Vladimir Chaloupka | |||
| Two large physics Collaborations are experimenting with hypertext webs built
with the World-Wide-Web (WWW) technology. The projects are the Study of Charm
Baryons (Experiment E781) at Fermilab, and the Deep Underwater Muon and
Neutrino Detection (DUMAND) off the coast of Hawaii. The webs are publicly
accessible from WWW. The best way to access the WEB is with a graphic browser
such as Mosaic. The most rudimentary, but universally available, method of
test -- browsing is
* "telnet info.cern.ch"
* "go http://web.phys.washington.edu/"
(once on the WEB, it should be easy to quickly find out how to get Mosaic or
other advanced browsers)
The goal is to build webs capable of providing a prompt answer to (almost) any question about the experiments, serving a broad range of users (from the members of the two Collaborations needing a particular technical detail, all the way to the outsiders interested in a popular introduction). Both projects are at a stage where the real usefulness of this approach can be evaluated. Keywords: WWW, World-Wide-Web, Physics research, Collaborative hypertext | |||
| A Semantic Database Approach to Hypermedia Systems for the Museum of Local History | | BIBAK | 10 | |
| Carl Taylor; Douglas Tudhope; Paul Beynon-Davies | |||
| The demonstration will show how a semantic database approach can be used to
create hypermedia systems within the domain of local history museums. The
demonstration will present an architecture based on an idea originally
developed for database work -- the binary relational store. The store's power
derives from its use of a single, uniform data structure. This structure can
be used store both intensional and extensional information and is capable of
representing abstraction in the application design. Through the presentation
of two prototypes, Great Inclinations and HyperSHIC, it will be shown how the
architecture might support automatic maintenance, different interface /
navigation units such as general public browsing, more focusses activity, and
authoring or classification by the curator. Keywords: Hypermedia, Semantic databases, Binary relational model, Museum information
systems | |||
| Balancing Ranking and Sequential Ordering in the Presentation of Search Results using Discussions | | BIBAK | 11 | |
| Alan J. Wecker | |||
| Ranked lists of search results for in-book searches can lose sequence
information which is valuable both to the user and to the retrieval/browsing
system. We have conceived a unit of organization called the "discussion" to
overcome this problem. A discussion is simply a contiguous region in a
document which addresses a certain topic. Search results are presented as a
ranked list of discussions, where the discussions are created dynamically based
on the raw search results. Our demo, using a modified version of IBM
BookManager READ/2, shows an implementation of discussion ordering, with
parameters to interactively control discussion size and density. This
technique is also relevant to hypertexts, information filtering, and other
applications which combine the notions of sequence and relevance. Keywords: Ranking, Ordering, Tours, IR and hypertext | |||
| CSILE: A Collaborative Educational Hypermedia System | | BIBAK | 11 | |
| Peter Rowley; Jim Hewitt | |||
| The goal of the Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE)
Project at OISE is to build (a) an instructional theory driven by cognitive
science research into collaborative learning processes and expert knowledge
organization and (b) a collaborative educational hypermedia system to support
educational practice inspired by the theory.
We seek a new instructional theory to address the problems of inert knowledge and to encourage development of cognitive skills and attitudes associated with sustained inquiry. If students are merely exposed to curriculum content in a task-oriented context of doing projects, writing essays, taking tests and the like, there is a high likelihood of them remembering what they have been exposed to only as disconnected "inert" facts, if they remember them at all. In contrast, if students are actively engaged in establishing learning goals, stating their preconceptions about a phenomenon, seeking new information to fill in gaps, and reformulating their theories in conjunction with (and as a result of being challenged by) others, they tend to remember what they have learned more deeply and are better able to apply it in novel situations. They also begin to develop a genuine appreciation of the culture of sustained collaborative inquiry. The CSILE System's design is based on classroom experience and on the foundational theory, and in turn provides support for classroom experiments to test its predictions. It has been iteratively developed over the last seven years and is now in use in approximately a dozen schools across North America. We are demonstrating the latest version of CSILE, running on a small network of Macintosh computers, and will be showing CSILE's facilities for asynchronous integrated expression, discussion of, and reflection on knowledge in textual and graphical form. Our current research includes providing overviews of important links and other relationships within the database. Keywords: Education, Fine-grained collaboration, Asynchronous multi-user hypermedia | |||
| INTELTEXT: Producing Coherent Textual Sequences While Navigating in Large Non-Hierarchical Hypertexts | | BIBAK | 12 | |
| Dmitry Subbotin | |||
| IntelText is a software tool intended for accessing and arranging loosely
structured information. The approach is based on a set of heuristic rules of
navigation in a hypertext network.
IntelText is capable of drawing out text items from a heap of information and representing them in a well-ordered sequence. Text items can be thoughts, facts, messages, abstracts etc. The user links the items (manually or automatically), forming a hypertext network. A link has no direction, weight, or other attributes. Its presence indicates just the semantic closeness of a pair of items. This implies the preference for mono-semantic text items. The automatic (algorithmic) navigation becomes possible in the network, based on the correspondence between topological and semantical connectedness of items. The algorithms provide for composing of well-ordered sequences of text items. The user sets the theme which he/she is interested in, by indicating the initial item. On each step of navigation the next item is chosen that is semantically (and topologically) close to the previous part of the navigation route, i.e. its links with already included items are considered. Depending on the kind of information, the resulting text sequence (the navigation route) can be either an ordered selection of information elaborating the given theme, or even a linear text. The application area of IntelText can be compilation of surveys, analysis of a flow of messages or a set of ideas, intelligent selection and arranging of information, authoring work, etc. Keywords: Intellectual navigation, Authoring, Coherence, Information organizers,
Hypertext linearization | |||
| Microsoft Access Cue Cards | | BIBAK | 12 | |
| Cyndi Bieniek | |||
| Cue Cards are like an online coach. They allow people to do their own work
as they learn Microsoft Access. Cue Cards provide step-by-step guidance
through the most common Microsoft Access tasks. They communicate with
Microsoft Access to determine what information to display, and can provide
prerequisite information based on this communication. For example, if a user
wants to create a form but doesn't have a database open, Cue Cards will provide
the information on how to open a database first. For new Microsoft Access
users, Cue Cards offer a structured yet personalized learning path.
For Microsoft Access, Cue Cards replace the traditional tutorial, which provides instruction using "canned" examples, and follows a structured, linear path. Cue Cards are revolutionary because they break away from the rigid structure of a tutorial and allow the user follow a decision tree to create his or her own instructional path. Unlike a traditional tutorial, Cue Cards communicate with Microsoft Access and can "customize" instruction based on this communication. Finally, Cue Cards allow the user to work with his or her own data, rather than requiring practice with sample data. Keywords: "Do your own work as you learn," "a guided walk-through," "online coach,"
"What do you want to do?" | |||
| Developing Global HyperMedia: The NCSA Mosaic System | | BIBAK | 13 | |
| Chris Wilson; Jon Mittelhauser | |||
| NCSA is currently developing a new software tool, NCSA Mosaic, that will
encompass all of the currently used global information systems and provide
greatly increased functionality and ease of access to the Internet-based
universal information space. NCSA Mosaic is a distributed hypermedia
information system based on the World Wide Web technology originated by CERN.
Mosaic provides a unified, coherent, hypermedia-based portal to the expanding
Internet information space by enabling transparent access to all of the major
information systems currently in use on the network (Gopher, WAIS, anonymous
FTP, Archie, Usenet news, etc.). By virtue of its World Wide Web basis, Mosaic
also provides a unique, flexible and important networked information
functionality not available in other existing systems -- distributed
hypermedia. In addition, Mosaic provides user- and community-level annotation
and hyperlink support for collaborative work based on information accessible on
the network. Mosaic is being developed across the X Window System, Macintosh
and Microsoft Windows environments. Mosaic was originally conceived as an
asynchronous collaboration system -- an environment for geographically
distributed group or community members to operate on a common networked
information base as part of their everyday work Current and future development
will focus on enabling and expanding capabilities for information sharing,
collaborative navigation and local information space construction across the
global information space. Mosaic already supports extensive local information
space customization methods, including text and audio annotations that can be
attached transparently to any document available from any information source on
the Internet. Future efforts will evolve this into a general system for
sharing annotation, hyperlink, and document and information space construction
activities across small and large groups and communities alike. As a result of
these efforts, Mosaic and the Internet will become a flexible, malleable, and
extensible information and collaboration system for a wide variety of uses by a
large number of people, both independently and in groups and organizations. Keywords: Mosaic, World Wide Web, Distributed, Hypermedia, Information retrieval | |||
| SuperCat in the SuperBook Document Browser System | | BIBAK | 13 | |
| Carol Lochbaum | |||
| SuperCat is an automatically generated catalog of electronic documents that
allows users to locate and access documents from a very large collection.
SuperCat is simply added as another "document" to an existing SuperBook
library, requiring no modification to the SuperBook browser itself.
Finding a desired document in a full text database is a challenging problem. Typically catalog entries contain very limited information such as the title, author, and a few keywords, making it difficult to identify relevant documents. Moreover, different users may prefer different arrangements or views of a collection of documents, for example, chronologically vs. by author. SuperCat addresses these problems by providing one or more document catalogs for the SuperBook interface, taking advantage of the SuperBook search and navigation tools available for individual documents. Since SuperCat is automatically generated, the problem of frequent updates to the library can be dealt with efficiently. For alternative views of a document collection, several differently organized SuperCats can be constructed, without having to replicate the documents themselves. A SuperCat catalog contains the abstract or first 100 lines or so of text, the section headings, and hypertext links to the full text and graphics of each SuperBook document. Users first access SuperCat, then go to the actual documents using the links. Because SuperCat contains the complete heading structure of each document, which is fully indexed, it represents an improvement over traditional catalogs which generally contain only titles, keywords, etc. The demonstration will show how SuperCat is used to find documents in the SuperBook browser, and will also show how a new SuperCat is created when the SuperBook library is updated. SuperBook is a registered trademark of Bellcore. Keywords: SuperBook, Electronic library, Document browser, Library catalog, Hyperlinks | |||
| Browz-All: A Hierarchical Hypertext System | | BIBAK | 14 | |
| Joel Remde | |||
| Browz-All is a prototype hypertext user interface based on a hierarchical
organization of information objects. Browz-All addresses the problem of
efficient access -- any needed information should be available to the user, but
frequently used items should require the least effort to access.
A hierarchical design was chosen for several reasons: it has been successful in the SuperBook system; it scales up naturally; it allows flexibility in the amount of detail shown; and hierarchies are structures familiar to people. The user's own "information world", including both public and private information, is depicted in Browz-All as a hierarchy or tree of text icons. Detailed objects appear separately as tiled windows, and the user can easily switch between the two views. The tree can be expanded at points of interest until the desired information objects are found. The upper portion of the tree, which is always visible, provides context for the information to avoid the problem of "getting lost". Exploration and manipulation of the tree is done via a mouse gesture command interface. The tree structure can be customized according to the user's own needs or conceptual organization. Items may be placed under as many categories in the hierarchy as desired; color cues help identify them for navigation purposes. The system, not the user, manages screen layout, relieving the user of positioning and uncovering windows. This is supposed to improve efficiency of use. Browz-All attempts to keep frequently or recently used items visible and pushes such items toward the top of the tree where they can be found more readily. The demonstration will include a sample hierarchical "information space", and will show how it can be customized, navigated, and how new information can be incorporated. SuperBook is a registered trademark of Bellcore. Keywords: Hierarchy, Efficiency, Gesture commands, Color, Screen layout | |||
| eText: An Interactive Hypermedia Publishing Environment | | BIBAK | 14 | |
| Rohit Khare | |||
| The eText engine lays the foundation for a document-centric interface to a
multimedia information space, affording an ease of construction and navigation
heretofore absent in large-scale hypertext publishing systems. eText realizes
its power from the innovative notion of a "self-aware" document, leveraging a
portable file format (RTF) manipulated by an object-oriented graphical user
interface under NeXTSTEP. The eText architecture abstracts and encapsulates
conventional semantics for authoring systems into three classes of annotations
to an underlying rich-text document: multimedia, interactive media, and
hypermedia. The eText system has been developed for the Archetypes project,
which aims to produce an online, extensible reference -- and text-book for
teaching parallel programming. To that end, eText is designed to easily
incorporate and cross-reference new documents, to support interactive
educational material, and to adapt to individual student preferences. Soon,
eText will also support the creation of an integrated development environment
for writing parallel and distributed programs within the Archetype paradigm.
This is possible because eText also supports an innovative ability to attach
domain-specific Editors to individual documents, live objects which assist the
user in the creation and editing of the document as a whole. For example, a
source-code document can not only support hypermedia annotations to the code,
but can also be attached to a code Editor, which offers syntax checking,
version control, and debugging. Such Editors are the first step towards active
agents in the construction of hypertexts. This demo is a work-in-progress, so
interested parties are encouraged to contact the presenters directly. Public
release of eText is projected for Q1 '94, tied to public release of the first
chapters of the Archetypes Electronic Textbook. During 1994, we look forward
to forming a consortium of parties interested in Archetypes and eText, as well
as the development of document cross-compilation technology to allow viewing of
eText documents on Macintosh and Windows platforms. Keywords: Hypermedia, Compound documents, Object-oriented analysis, Parallel
programming education, User interface design | |||
| Health Sciences Hypertexts at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center | | BIBAK | 15 | |
| Jeff Zucker; Robert M. Kahn; Narayanan Natarajan | |||
| At the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (CPMC) we have developed a
number of hypertext and free text retrieval computer applications aimed at an
extremely diverse audience which includes students and faculty in a university
setting as well as health care providers and patients in hospital and clinic
settings. Each application must be accessible to people from a variety of
computer skill levels, from a variety of medical skill levels and from a
variety of disciplines. In addition to the diversity of users, the CPMC
applications encompass a diversity of text sources. Some sources such as the
Physicians Desk Reference and the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services come
from established print sources. Others such as the Medical Logic Modules
Library and the Nursing Standards & Patient Education System were designed at
CPMC specifically for use on computers. A third category of sources is
represented by the Funding Opportunities database that we have adapted from an
unwieldy relational database into a more flexible free-text retrieval system.
Hypertext and free text systems offer features which make them ideal for
presenting information from both computer and text sources in a manner that is
individualized to the needs of users in a wide variety of learning contexts.
We built traditional linear indexes which are familiar to those accustomed to
the print sources. At the same time, we encourage a more freeform approach for
those who wish to access the information in a more flexible manner. Ad hoc
text searches and hard coded links allow users to combine information in ways
not possible in the print equivalents of the applications. Hypertext links
also allow for a more inclusive approach to user help and user feedback -- many
of our applications allow several levels of help and have hot links which allow
users to communicate directly with the developers and managers of the
information. Keywords: Health, Medicine, Nursing, Education, Hospital, Library, Full text | |||
| HyperGuide 2.0 for Windows | | BIBAK | 15 | |
| Beth Carter; Annie Breckenfeld; Dan Brown; Steven Wallace | |||
| The demonstration illustrates how fast and easy it is to learn new material
and find information with HyperGuide. The demonstration gives new users a
quick, animated introduction to each component in Windows. The graphical
presentation in each Feature Film lets users understand the purpose of the
component and shows the basic techniques required to use each component.
HyperGuide is an excellent example for prospective multimedia authors. The
presenters can provide insight into the challenges of producing a multimedia
document on the scale of HyperGuide. HyperGuide illustrates a variety of ways
to access related information from the user's current reading location. Keywords: Online access to comprehensive documentation, Animated segments to
illustrate and teach key concepts, Information available while applications are
running | |||
| ArborText's Hypertext Utilities for Authoring, Accessing, and Managing Information | | BIBAK | 16 | |
| Paul Klock | |||
| The ArborText product demonstration gives ACM Hypertext '93 attendees
hands-on experience with the ADEPT Series, a set of electronic publishing tools
which support the creation and use of hypermedia documents.
Underlying the ADEPT Series is a powerful programming language called the ADEPT Command Language. The Command Language gives hypermedia document developers the open system tools they need to implement hypertext applications. The Command Language is oriented to SGML information structures and it provides control of the rules, conditions, and actions of the hypermedia authoring system. For more tightly coupled hypermedia authoring applications, ArborText also provides an Application Programming Interface (API). The API allows an author to establish two-way communication between any document editing session and one or more other programs, e.g., a database system or full motion video application. All the programs are aware of events in the other programs and are able to exchange information freely through the API. ArborText uses Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) as its document structure. SGML is an International Standards Organization standard (ISO 8879) developed to facilitate document definition and interchange. SGML is a language for expressing documents in terms of their content and organization. In essence, the Document Type Definition (DTD) is the rule for defining and organizing Information Objects within a document. It provides the data structure against which the hypermedia document operates. The Information Objects can have as little or as much granularity as desired. Keywords: Authoring, Accessing and managing information | |||
| Hardhat HyperText -- Interfaces that Work in Industrial Workplaces | | BIBAK | 16 | |
| Bruce A. Warren; Neil Blahut | |||
| Popular hypertext user interfaces are designed by office workers, which is
probably why they get rejected by operators in chemical plants. Missing are
simplicity, robustness, scalability, customizability, speed, network document
sharing, and navigators that make millions of pages quickly accessible with
just a few mouse clicks. We will be demonstrating a user interface developed
by trial and error during six years of in-plant use. The interface works in
high pressure production environments to deliver documents and interactive
training with no training required to use the terminal. The interface allows
quick navigation through millions of documents using job-specific navigators.
Documents are accessed by clicking on text, drawings, diagrams, and pictures.
Industrial applications for hypertext and multimedia are here now -- electronic
job aids, interactive training, document management. This massive market is
being held back by consumer oriented hypertext interfaces being mis-applied to
unforgiving industrial applications. Keywords: Manufacturing, Training, Network, Navigate, Multimedia, Hardhat | |||
| Lust: A Hypertext Fiction | | BIBAK | 17 | |
| Mary-Kim Arnold | |||
| "Lust" is a hypertext fiction of 36 nodes. It was developed in Robert
Coover's experimental narrative workshop, and it addresses some of the issues
specific to writing fiction in an electronic environment. These issues include
repetition, multilinearity, multivocality, indeterminacy, narrative structure,
and user interaction.
The piece itself is an exploration of language and form. It begins with a prologue consisting of exactly thirty six words, and each word links to a particular node. Each node is linked to several others; some are text links, some are guarded space to space links. Because each reading is reader determined, each reading is unique, and the meaning and content of the story is changeable and transient. This feature of the piece calls attention to the indeterminate nature of language itself, and of hypertext fiction. Because there is no specific linear beginning, middle and end, the narrative is ongoing and changeable. Because each node uses one of an limitless number of points of view from which the "action" can be seen, the story is told and retold, with no one interpretation being superior to any other. It requires the reader to put the disparate pieces of information together, while also drawing the reader into the process of writing the story, since the reader chooses which words have texture to her, which determines the order in which the information is disclosed. In many ways, a piece like "Lust" embodies the nature of hypertext itself, in terms of fictional hypertext, at least. The structure of the piece (in this case, small, tight, limited) becomes part of the content, and perhaps in some cases, more important than the specific language used. Keywords: Hypertext fiction, Narrative structure, Repetition, Multilinearity,
Multivocality, Indeterminacy | |||
| DNE: An Internet Protocol for Hypertext Interoperability | | BIBAK | 17 | |
| Don McCracken; Robert Akscyn | |||
| Present schemes for cross-application node/data linking tend to be operating
system specific (e.g., OLE for DOS). They also tend to focus on linking
services -- node and script services are sometimes not provided for. An
alternative approach is to use an internetworking protocol that allows
hypertext systems (and other systems wishing to provide node and link services)
to interoperate (like WWW). This demonstration will illustrate a prototype
internetworking protocol developed to explore interoperability of hypertext
system and possibly provide an architectural foundation for large-scale
hypermedia-oriented digital libraries.
This protocol, called "DNE" for "Dynamic Node Exchange", provides a means to experiment with cross-system node, link, and script services. Protocols such as DNE, if based on a sufficiently broad data model, could provide a simple way for hypertext systems to interoperate, possibly allowing very large hypertexts to be constructed by integrating multiple heterogeneous hypertext databases. The demonstration will illustrate the work accomplished to date by using an existing hypermedia system (KMS) and accessing nodes from a number of remote sites over the Internet. The demonstration will also contrast the approach with other internet-based schemes such as World-Wide Web and Gopher. Keywords: Wide-area hypertext, Interoperability of heterogeneous hypertext systems | |||
| A Demonstration of MetaCard: "The World's Largest HyperCard Application" | | BIBAK | 18 | |
| David D. Sherertz | |||
| MetaCard is a hypertext Metathesaurus browser implemented using HyperCard.
The Metathesaurus is one of three Knowledge Sources released annually, since
1990, as part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Unified Medical
Language (UMLS) Project. The current version of MetaCard contains over 400 MBs
of information in 146 stacks and index files, about more than 152,000
biomedical concepts, including names, definitions, semantic types, and
relationships. MetaCard supports both the display of biomedical information
and navigation using the semantic relationships present. The principal
metaphor is "click to get more information." Several hundred sites worldwide
run MetaCard off the NLM-distributed CD-ROM.
Virtually everything the user sees in the interface is "live", in the sense that almost anything can be clicked on, and it will do something. There are close to 10 million inter-card links amongst over 182,000 cards organized into 137 HyperCard stacks. The demonstration will also illustrate the notion of a "no-typing" interface by using only "pointing and clicking" to navigate to biomedical concepts of interest to members of the audience. Audience involvement as participants in "Stump the Metathesaurus" will also illustrate the breadth of coverage in the current release of MetaCard. In spite of its shortcomings, MetaCard remains a remarkable artifact. We know of no other low-end, point-and-click implementation of comparable scale. After some explorations with a few contacts at Apple we began claiming that MetaCard was the world's largest HyperCard application and then waited for someone to contradict us. We are still waiting. Keywords: Navigational browsing, Automatic hypertext, HyperCard, Semantic locality | |||
| Hypertext on the Corporate Help Desk | | BIBAK | 18 | |
| Tom Rearick | |||
| This presentation will demonstrate hypertext embedded in a corporate help
desk application. The challenge is to empower the help desk professional by
leveraging the collective resources in the corporation itself. The integration
of Lotus Notes and Lotus SmarText provide a complete solution to in-house
electronic publishing and collaborative problem-solving. Lotus SmarText
automates the conversion of existing text files into hypertext-rich electronic
books. Lotus Notes combines communication and database technologies to
increase business productivity. A real-world help desk application will
demonstrate how customer support professionals use Lotus Notes to:
* Resolve customer problems
* Verify product deficiencies and report them as part of a continuous program
of product improvement * Simplify resource planning and management * Collect useful information and disseminate it to other help desk personnel. * Provide feedback to the documentation department Complementing Notes, Lotus SmarText is used to: * Add value to existing corporate documentation * Search a large corpus of text quickly and reliably * Deliver value-added product support information to user's sites. This demonstration will illustrate how these two products work in concert, not in a single department but across the entire Company and among its customers. Lotus SmarText and Notes are not simply alternatives to paper documentation, but a means for effecting positive change in the corporation. Keywords: SmarText, Notes, Help desk | |||