Future Visions of Common-Use Hypertext: introduction to a special issue

Helen Ashman, Adam Moore

View full text: HTML

You've Got Hypertext

M. C. Schraefel, Leslie Carr, David De Roure, Wendy Hall

The paper considers possible "future everyday hypertext systems". To ground the discussion, we look first at the functional and conceptual definitions of hypertext that have evolved in the hypertext research community. We then consider these definitions against the Web, the best known current everyday hypertext, but one that the hypertext community has regarded as only partially a hypertext system at best. We propose, however, that a full, rich hypertext is alive and well and living in an equally successful everyday system: that system is email. We look at how email meets the criteria, both functionally and conceptually, for rich hypertext. We then use email-as-hypertext as our touchstone for assessing future hypertext systems. In particular, we consider the newest system on the Web event horizon, the Semantic Web, and show how the potential hypertextness of the Semantic Web has been anticipated by pre- and co-Web hypertext research systems. We consider how, if informed by the attributes of our email model, the Semantic Web may be able to break away from the limited hypertext model of the Web to become a rich, everyday hypertext system like email. We present three current hypertext research efforts that use the Semantic Web platform to show how these may be seen to embody such email-like hypertext qualities.

View full text: HTML

The Indirect Authoring Paradigm – Bringing Hypertext into the Web

Hartmut Obendorf

Building hypertext systems to provide the required functionality to write hypertexts has always been a goal of hypertext research. The parallel development of hypertext research prototypes and the World Wide Web has resulted in repeated attempts to replace the Web or offer world-wide all-purpose services to augment the Web with "missing" functionality. The paper argues that focusing on the development of tools that offer support to hypertext authors for specific tasks is a necessary first step for the introduction of sophisticated hypertext features into the Web. Following a brief history of interaction with the Web, we demonstrate why authoring tools for the Web are a critical target for efforts to extend the use of hypertexts in the Web. We introduce indirect authoring as a label for a shared characteristic of different approaches that try to reduce the complexity and cognitive overhead involved in authoring hypertext. Drawing on this analysis, we lay out some consequences for hypertext research. We provide pointers to projects that have started to experinment with indirect authoring, and list immediate research questions. Developing a diversity of task-oriented authoring tools to reduce the cognitive overhead for authoring hypertexts could change the face of the Web.

View full text: HTML

A Cosmology for a Different Computer Universe: Data Model, Mechanisms, Virtual Machine and Visualization Infrastructure

Theodor Holm Nelson

The computing world is based on one principal system of conventions -- the simulation of hierarchy and the simulation of paper. The article introduces an entirely different system of conventions for data and computing. zzstructure is a generalized representation for all data and a new set of mechanisms for all computing. The article provides a reference description of zzstructure and what we hope to build on it. From orthogonally connected data items (zzcells) and untyped connections (zzlinks), we build a cross-connected fabric of data (zzstructure) that is visualizable, interactive, and programmable. zzstructure does not have a canonical string representation, as is usual. It is essentially spatial. It is based on criss-crossed lists of cells which are assigned to dimensions. Along these dimensions the cells are viewable, traversible, and subject to operations. This leads to programming mechanisms built on this fabric; a virtual interactive machine (zzvim) built on these mechanisms; new visualization techniques built on the data fabric and mechanisms; and proposed new formats for the general representation of documents and arbitrary structure -- perhaps less biased than XML.

View full text: HTML

The Next Big Thing: From Hypermedia to Datuments

Peter Murray-Rust, Henry S. Rzepa

The concept of a datument as a hyperdocument for transmitting and preserving the complete content of a piece of scientific work is introduced. Currently the scientific publishing process loses almost all of the information environment that the author creates or possesses. It is shown that datuments can record and reproduce experiments and act as a lossless way of publishing science. This is illustrated with specific examples drawn from scientific documents and molecular science, showing how a datument containing molecular coordinates can be viewed in various styles and how typical documents deriving from organic and physical chemistry and expressed in XML can be transformed using XSLT.

View full text: HTML

Unified Hyperstructures for Bioinformatics: Escaping the Application Prison

Adam Moore, Tim Brailsford

The Next Big Thing in hypertext will be unifying different applications in bioinformatics through the ZigZag paradigm, allowing this field to live up to its promise of revolutionising the pharmaceutical industry. The paper outlines ZigZag, Ted Nelson's unique hyperstructural paradigm, and illustrates how, by examining a current bioinformatics task such as structure/binding prediction, the application of this novel paradigm has the potential to revolutionise bioinformatics completely by allowing a unified approach to a task currently fulfilled by fragmented data and applications.

View full text: HTML

The Future of Mathematical Text: A Proposal for a New Internet Hypertext for Mathematics

Robert Mayans

The Internet has transformed the practice of mathematical writing, and mathematical texts of all kinds are moving online. But the fundamental change to come in mathematical publication is not just moving print forms to electronic documents, but recreating mathematics in a new architecture: a hypertext that reflects the deep unity and universality of mathematics, that can grow and diversify as mathematics changes. It is argued that hypertext is a natural representation of mathematical thought, with its deep interconnection of ideas, the need for constant revision, and the multiplicity of viewpoints. The design of a hypertext must take into account how mathematics is structured and how it is understood: its internal consistency, the need for preparation and review, and the importance of strong tool support for reading and writing text. A high-level design is proposed, combining structured and network hypertext, with a simple link and editorial structure, and design issues concerning language representation, medium- and high-level structure, editorial policy, administration, and technology are examined. A hypertext of sufficient quality and usability will powerfully influence how mathematics is taught, communicated and used, in the classroom, in the workplace and in research. This change in how the Internet is used is not primarily technical: it is the extension of current technology towards a new goal. Gaps and weaknesses of the design are discussed, as well as possible solutions, and a plan to implement the hypertext on the Web is developed.

View full text: HTML

proXimity: Walking the Link

Simon Harper, Carole Goble, Stephen Pettitt

Our society is consistently told that the world is becoming increasingly connected, that the Internet can join physically disparate people by means of email, Web sites, and chatrooms, and that the one 'must have' is a personal domain name; in effect, that the virtual should be more respected than the physical. People are led to believe that computers, with the 'net' as their focus, are their portal to other worlds, their communication mechanism to remote peoples, 'blogging' their primary form of self expression. All this is in part true, but we think there are fundamental issues that are not addressed. The focus on only the virtual is skewing our perception to over-estimate the Web's importance. The increased complexity inherent in all large systems will become too great for many users as the Web develops and grows. The local environment, often most pertinent to the user, is currently completely ignored with regard to dynamic information giving. The Web's focus on information belies the fact that the world is also composed of physical artifacts. Therefore, we think that the next direction for the Web is the conjoining of the physical and virtual. We suggest that they must be connected because without a physical presence the virtual world cannot attain its full potential. To reduce the complexity and stress placed on the user, the Web should relate to the users' physical location and real-world artifacts encountered to make meaningful choices about what information is currently useful or required. In effect, the user acquires a real-world centric view of the Web in which the Web conforms to reality, not reality to the Web. The primary goal of our system, 'proXimity', is to augment realities by giving hypertext, and thus the Web, a physical presence in the real world.

View full text: HTML

A Personal Information and Knowledge Infrastructure Integrator

K. Andrew Edmonds, James Blustein, Don Turnbull

The Next Big Thing is being grown organically, cultivated by software developers and pruned by personal Weblog publishers. The rising Weblogging space of the Internet is looking more like traditional hypertext than the Web of the 1990s. The ways in which Weblogging has evolved beyond the previous limitations of the Web as hypertext, and the ways Weblogging is evolving towards common-use hypertext destined to play a critical role in everyday life, will be explored. We have a vision of a universal information management system built on extending the traditional hypertext framework. In our utopian future, everyone will use tools descended from today's blogs to structure, search and share personal information, as well as to participate in shared discussion. We begin by expressing a vision of common-use hypertext for information management and interpersonal communication. This vision is grounded in the rapid evolution of Weblogs and known issues in information systems and hypertext. The practical implications of who will use these systems, and how, is expanded as usage scenarios for Weblogs now and in the future. After recapping the current issues facing the Weblogging community, we look to the long-range implementation issues with optimism. Our system is forward-looking yet realistic. The activities the system will support are extrapolated from recent developments in the online community, and most of the sketches of implementation are based on current approaches. It is of more than passing interest that the features we extrapolate were all described by Nelson as early hypertext ideals. Of particular interest is that the features are now being implemented because of perceived immediate need by communities of interest.

View full text: HTML

Writing the Web

Angelo di Iorio, Fabio Vitali

Ted Nelson's Xanadu remains an influential example of the way a world wide hypertext system should have been, allowing free access to hypertext pages for content customization and editing. This is still impossible or unacceptably difficult on the World Wide Web. Yet, the Web cannot be replaced, given the amount of data and tools that rely on its basic protocols and languages. The vision presented here is of an evolution of the Web where, within the current framework of technologies and tools, every Web page can be edited and customized, links can be created, and collaboration can be set up. In a way, this is a vision of Xanadu coming to life again, but within the framework of Web technologies, styles and tools. It is a vision of the best possible approach to a fully writable, distributed hypertext system within the limitations of real-life protocols. This writable web, already partially available with blogs and wikis, is enhanced through the implementation of xanalogical storage to take care of individual changes to documents, and mechanisms for transclusions. IsaWiki, a client-server system being developed at the University of Bologna, is presented and shown to adhere to this vision of the writable web, and as being a first step in that direction.

View full text: HTML

The Next Big Thing: Adaptive Web-Based Systems

Paul De Bra, Lora Aroyo, Vadim Chepegin

At the ACM Hypertext Conference a panel discussed "The Next Big Thing Inc." in the area of hypertext and hypermedia. The Web has been the "Big Thing" during the past 10 years, but its success has also made it very difficult to find the appropriate information in an ocean of over 3 billion pages. Whereas search engines achieve incredible precision, they suffer from the same "one size fits all" approach that characterizes the Web sites they index. The paper defends the position that personalization, and in particular automatic personalization or adaptation, is the key to reach the goal of offering each individual user (or user group) the information they need. During the panel discussion there was debate about whether the user should always have access and control over the entire (hypertextual) information space. There were different views on whether the "right" to all the information is best guaranteed by offering tools that reduce the information space the user perceives so that the user can actually find and reach the information, or by offering unfiltered access to an ocean of information in which everything is available but in which perhaps nothing can be found. We argue in favor of adaptation but at the same time point out flaws in the way adaptive hypermedia has been used until now. The paper then proposes a new, modular adaptive hypermedia architecture that should lead to adaptive Web-based systems as the "Next Big Thing" indeed. In this architecture, different applications can collaborate in creating and updating a user model. Shared user model servers are not just needed for adaptive Web sites, but are also the key to enabling the development of ambient intelligence. (Many small systems then need to work together and base their actions on common knowledge about their user(s).) Sharing user models can of course cause a "big brother" problem. Legislation is already in place to protect users' privacy by placing legal limits on the kind of user modeling and sharing of user models that is allowed. The paper briefly reviews the legal issues of user modeling and adaptation in order to provide not just a future outlook based on "wild imagination" but based on a realistic vision of what will not only become technically possible but also of what will be "acceptable".

View full text: HTML

Ubiquitous Metainformation and the WYWWYWI Principle

Joseph Catanio, Nkechi Nnadi, Li Zhang, Michael Bieber, Roberto Galnares

Computer systems should provide what you want, when you want it (the WYWWYWI principle, pronounced "why why why"), but they frequently do not. Our research encourages a new philosophy of design based on the WYWWYWI principle, and the tools for authors to provide this easily. Comprehensive metainformation embodies the WYWWYWI principle. Metainformation includes the structural relationships, content-based relationships, user-declared link-based relationships, and metadata around an element of interest. Combined, the metainformation goes a long way towards establishing the full semantics for (the meaning of and context around) a system's elements. We take a three-pronged approach to providing metainformation on a grand scale. First, we provide a systematic methodology for systems analysts to determine the relationships around elements of interest in their information domains - relationship analysis. Relationship analysis will result in a comprehensive set of a domain's structural relationships. Second, we provide a Metainformation Engine, which automatically generates sets of structural and content-based relationships around elements of interest as links, as well as metadata within static and virtual documents. Third, we provide an infrastructure for widespread link-based services within both static and virtual documents. This approach provides the inspiration as well as a sound foundation for a ubiquitous embracing of the WYWWYWI principle in the everyday systems people use, both on the Web and beyond.

View full text: PDF

Integrating Reading and Writing of Documents

P. J. Brown, Heather Brown

Computer users have become accustomed to the writing of documents being regarded as a separate activity from the reading of documents. We believe that this division is unnecessary and limits the effectiveness of virtually every computer user. It is time for a rethink of underlying concepts. A key concept for integrating reading with writing is a general mechanism for annotation. This general mechanism can be combined with hyperlinking to create a single unifying super-concept that provides a base for integrating reading and writing. The paper explains the underlying ideas, and describes the results of a small experiment that supported the viability of the super-concept. We believe that the super-concept might possibly provide the foundations for a revolution in thinking about documents, which would benefit everyone.

View full text: HTML