The Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia brings together scholars, researchers, and practitioners from diverse disciplines to consider the form, role and impact of hypertext and hypermedia in a forum of discussion of ideas, design and use of hypertext and hypermedia in a variety of domains. The conference also considers the transformative power of hypermedia and its ability to alter the way we read, write, argue, work, exchange information and entertain ourselves.
“There are many criteria for evaluating hypertexts. Adequacy and cost effectiveness are perhaps the most obvious from the producer's perspective; additional criteria are important for users. Examination of the limitations of various assessment criteria highlights the twin issues of the cognitive costs and benefits experienced by the using hypertexts as part of some other task. Many interface characteristics can contribute to readers' cognitive overheads. There is evidence that even changing screens to access information only a click away can impair memory processes. Fortunately, because hypertexts are computer-based, readers can call upon a variety of aids to support their cognitive activities, particularly memory and planning processes. The novelty of some of these prostheses raises questions about the literacy skills that hypertext readers may need. Studies of factors influencing readers' strategic decisions about using memory aids are discussed, together with their implications for hypertext design. It is concluded that hypertext evaluation requires a richer understanding of the cognitive entailments of working with information. But hypertexts, having highlighted the problems of cognitive costs, have the potential for offering readers the means of reducing these overheads not just for hypertext use but for many tasks that involve working with information.”
“By integrating dynamic linking and automatic link generation into the automatic generation of an overview map we get a unique tool for navigation in hyperspace. We introduce the concept of HYPERDRAWERs to get a means for the partitioning of nodes in ordered sequences. CYBERMAP either complements existing navigational aids for hyperdocuments or provides a self sufficient navigation tool for browsing in a document. In addition CYBERMAP offers the capability of horizontal growth and easy hypertextualization of non-hypertextual documents without restricting the use of already installed browsing mechanisms besides CYBERMAP.”
“Hypertext systems provide links between different pieces of information (text, figures, pictures, etc.) so that the reader can follow many different paths corresponding to lines of thoughts, levels of description, levels of details, and so on. One of the main problems in using hypertext systems is the navigation problem [Ni90a]. Users tend to get lost partly because the information they are reading can have a complicated structure which is usually unknown to them. We study in this paper a technique to help users orient themselves by a quick browsing, which we call flying, through hypertext. The first thing many people do when given a new book is flip through the pages to get a first impression of the book. Quite a bit of information can be gained by this quick informal evaluation. First, just the size of the book is a good indicator. A ten-page brochure is treated differently than a 500-page instruction manual. The book's density (how many characters per page), its layout (e.g., the font, the percentage of pictures), the technical content (e.g., number of equations, number of technical drawings), familiar features (e.g., pictures or drawings that the reader has seen elsewhere), just to name a few simple things that can be determined quickly, all give us important information about the book without reading even one sentence. This kind of information is not immediately available in hypertext, and we believe that the lack of it contributes to the navigation problem. We would like to provide this type of information in a quick and flexible way. We describe in this paper a tool for flying through hypertext systems and discuss the issues involved in its implementation. Our tool is analogous to flipping the pages of a book with one notable exception: the flipping is not necessarily in a linear order. The variability of the links and the structure that they provide enable flexible flipping in many different orders controlled by the reader. The key to any flipping is speed. The goal is not to digest the contents of the pages, but rather to gain some insight to features such as organization, size, depth, level, detail, and so on. Another analogy is to seeing a movie, or better yet a videodisk, in fast forward. There are certain characteristics of the movie that can be studied better that way. Flying can also be used to move fast from one place to another in the hypertext following a certain order or traversal. Flying is not intended to replace any of the other navigation tools; it is an additional tool.”
“Current hypermedia tools do not support the needs of collaborative work groups in distributed heterogeneous environment and cannot be integrated into the existing and planned computing environment at large enterprises like Boeing. It is in meeting these needs, however, that hypermedia could make its greatest impact. Hypermedia systems must evolve beyond their current standalone status into a technology that is truly integrative. We use a description of some current hypermedia projects and a representative future scenario to help identify technical requirements and strategies for developing and deploying hypermedia that is of sufficient "industrial strength" to support a large engineering enterprise. This paper is addressed to hypermedia researchers and developers as well as to our colleagues in other business and engineering organizations. The intent of this paper is to remind both the research and development communities of the urgent, "real-world" needs that exist and to encourage dialogue between the two worlds.”
“Most hypermedia systems emphasize the integration of graphics, images, video, and audio into a traditional hypertext framework. The hyperspeech system described in this paper, a speech-only hypermedia application, explores issues of navigation and system architecture in an audio environment without a visual display. The system under development uses speech recognition to maneuver in a database of digitally recorded speech segments; synthetic speech is used for control information and user feedback. In this research prototype, recorded audio interviews were segmented by topic, and hypertext-style links were added to connect logically related comments and ideas. The software architecture is data driven, with all knowledge embedded in the links and nodes, allowing the software that traverses through the network to be straightforward and concise. Several user interfaces were prototyped, emphasizing different styles of speech interaction and feedback between the user and machine. In addition to the issues of navigation in a speech only database, areas of continuing research include: dynamically extending the database, use of audio and voice cues to indicate landmarks, and the simultaneous presentation of multiple channels of speech information.”
“Recently Brown University's Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS) extended Intermedia to allow authors to define Hypermedia Templates -- sets of pre-linked documents which can be duplicated. Templates facilitate the creation of consistent hypermedia collections by automating what can be a laborious task: making documents and forging links manually. In this paper we discuss the Hypermedia Templates project. We first describe a collection of Intermedia materials that has been electronically published and explain the information design principles that were applied to it. We point out some general principles for building consistent hypermedia collections and discuss how these were reflected in the list of features for Hypermedia Templates. We then describe a user's interaction with a prototypical Hypermedia Template, as well as details of the user interface that we have built to provide template functionality in Intermedia. Finally, we identify some key features that would be important components of any next-generation template software.”
“Research on understanding linear texts has shown that comprehension and navigation mainly depend on the reader's ability to construct a coherent mental representation. While the author of a traditional document can use a variety of structural cues to support his readers in building up such a representation, the author of a hyperdocument faces a new problem. If he wants to ensure that his readers understand the entire hyperdocument as a coherent entity, he needs means to indicate its structure in a comprehensible way. In this paper, we propose a construction kit which provides dedicated design objects for this purpose. The design objects can be characterized as building blocks for three functionally different components of a hyperdocument: its content part, organizational part, and presentation part. In addition to the design objects, we propose some design rules which should guide the construction of coherent hyperdocuments.”
“Our project is studying the process by which groups of individuals work together to build large, complex structures of ideas, and we are developing a distributed hypermedia system to support that process. This description includes a brief overview of the system, but emphasizes three components: a hypermedia data management system or graph server, a set of browsers for working with graph objets, and a set of applications for working with data contents of graph nodes. A number of research issues are raised and discussed in context, including: composite objets; anchored links; scaling up for large applications; partitioning the hypermedia graph; consistency and completeness across subgraphs; and an open, extensible architecture for applications.”
“This paper describes the nested context model, a conceptual framework for the definition, presentation and browsing of documents. The model carefully combines hypertext links with the concept of context nodes, used to group together sets of nodes. Context nodes can be nested to any depth and, thus, generalize the classical hierarchical organization of documents. The nested context model also defines an abstract and flexible application program interface that captures the idea that different applications may observe the same node in different ways. Finally, the model offers a rich set of operations to explore the double structure of a hyperdocument - that defined by the links and that induced by the nesting of context nodes.”
“Many hypertext systems are primarily "static" systems that were designed specifically to apply a hypertext interface to a particular domain. For us, hypertext is a tool for augmenting "dynamic", non-hypertext information systems such as decision support systems and expert systems. Many information systems require a dynamic implementation of hypertext, one that relies primarily on virtual structures and computation to generate a hypertext network in real time. This paper explores the demands our dynamic view of hypertext makes on hypertext standards from two angles. First, what coordination is necessary to establish a dynamic hypertext interface to an arbitrary front-end or back-end information system? Here we introduce the concept of bridge laws to map application components to hypertext structures. Second, how does a dynamic view of hypertext affect document interchange among hypertext systems and between a hypertext and non-hypertext systems?”
“A technique is described for adapting the apparent structure of a hypertext to the behavior and preferences exhibited by its users while browsing. Examples are given an implementation of this technique using the timing mechanism in Trellis. In the technique, event durations in a document are altered without actually changing the links in the underlying Petri net. The two extrema of instantaneous events and infinite delays can be used to create apparent node and link deletions and additions, as well as to insert new tokens (loci of activity) into a document. Adaptation of these times is accomplished using a simple data state in which the event timings (and other document properties) are variables, called attributes. As a reader traverses hypertext links, author-supplied adaptation agents are invoked to collect information and possibly change the values of the attributes. Agents encapsulate and effect the criteria for deciding when, and specifically how, a structure should be adapted. Several practical examples illustrate the conclusion of this report: sophisticated alterations do not require a complicated adaptation mechanism, that changing document constants into document variables provides flexibility to this mechanism, and that using a limited simple mechanism is the only hope for retaining analysis of the static and dynamic net properties.”
“Hypermedia is often described as nodes of information with links between them, suggesting the conceptual model of a graph. A broader definition is a system of nodes of information through which people can move nonlinearly. Such a definition, while including graph-based hypermedia, also allows alternative implementations. This paper illustrates the need for alternative models by exhibiting a particular reasoning task for which navigating among nodes by way of explicit links is less effective than an alternative model of intersecting sets of nodes. The task is taxonomic reasoning, a particular kind of reasoning task that deals with the comparison and classification of highly similar nodes, in which an analyst viewing one node thinks not in terms of linking it to another node, but of including it in or excluding it from a set of related nodes. This paper discusses this kind of reasoning and describes HyperSet, a set-based hypermedia system designed to support it. It compares HyperSet with other tools that support taxonomic reasoning, discusses the formal and implementational relationships between graph-based and set-based hypermedia, and defines the features that are required in a hybrid system that can concurrently support both set and graph manipulations.”
“Recently, there has been increasing interest in software reuse as a way to improve software quality and productivity. One of the major problems with reusing libraries of software components is helping users effectively select (find and understand) components of interest. This paper explores the use of hypertext to enhance the process of component selection through a prototype system called Kiosk. Included are discussions of the selection process, why hypertext is well suited for supporting selection, and important characteristics of hypertext systems intended to support reuse. Also discussed are how reusable libraries can be structured using hypertext, how such libraries can be mechanically built, and how their use enhances the component selection process. Kiosk consists of an open set of tools that can created, browse, and modify nodes and links in a software library. One of these tools, Cost++, can automatically generate a linked structure for libraries by clustering workproducts into components, and then placing components into multiple classification hierarchies. The Kiosk browsing tools allow users to peruse the components in libraries, examine library structures from multiple perspectives, and add new links and nodes to enhance the standard library structure.”
“Hypertext systems have traditionally focused on information management and presentation. In contrast, the Aquanet hypertext system described in this paper is designed to support knowledge structuring tasks. Aquanet is a browser-based tool that allows users to graphically represent information in order to explore its structure. In this paper, we discuss our motivations for developing Aquanet. We then describe the basic concepts underlying the tool and give an overview of the user interface. We close with some brief comments about our initial experiences with the tool in use and some of the directions we see the Aquanet research moving in the near future.”
“I describe how I have used IRIS Intermedia, a sophisticated hypermedia program, in teaching an upper-level class on the emergence of philosophy and science in the context of religious story and material culture. I first describe the program and summarize the pedagogical results of using the program as documented at Brown University. I then describe various uses of the program in the Drury class, and the observed impacts of these uses. Our experience with hypermedia at Drury College both corroborates and extends the pedagogical impacts of hypermedia already documented at Brown University, especially in terms of dramatically increasing student mastery of difficult material, and student involvement in the course through collaborative learning strategies supported by hypermedia resources distributed across a network. These pedagogically desirable benefits, however, are accompanied by concerns regarding "fragmentation" and "decentering" in student work in hypermedia, and regarding ethical irresponsibility towards shared and thus vulnerable resources. These results are especially significant as they demonstrate that instructors with relatively limited resources can nonetheless reap dramatic pedagogical benefits from hypermedia technologies in the classroom. This also means: relatively exotic hypermedia technologies may successfully migrate to the resource-limited classrooms of smaller colleges and universities.”
“The Chemistry Online Retrieval Experiment, or CORE project, is studying the possibility of creating a useful, usable electronic library for chemistry researchers. In a preliminary study, chemists were observed performing five different tasks representative of typical uses of the scientific journal literature. The tasks simulated browsing journals, answering specific questions given a citation to an article, answering specific questions given no citation, writing essays to summarize and integrate information, and finding "analogous transformations" for chemical reactions. Chemists carried out these tasks using one of three systems: (a) the printed journals supplemented with a widely used printed index system, (b) a hypertext system (the SuperBook document browser), or (c) a new electronic system (Pixlook) that incorporates traditional document retrieval methods plus full text indexing and delivers bitmap images of journal pages. Both electronic systems had a large advantage over the printed system for search and essay tasks. SuperBook users were faster and more accurate than Pixlook users at finding information relevant to browsing and search topics. Certain SuperBook hypertext features, however, did not work as well as Pixlook for displaying target articles. The patterns of data and log files of subjects suggest how SuperBook, Pixlook and related systems might be improved.”
“We present the latest developments of HDM, a design model for Hypertext Applications. The basic features of HDM are the representation of applications through several design primitives: typed entities composed of hierarchies of components; different perspectives for each component; units corresponding to component-perspective pairs; bodies representing the actual content of the units; structural links, binding together components or sub-entities of the same entity; typed application links, interconnecting components belonging to different entities; and a specific browsing semantics based on anchors, as a way to activate many different link types from within a unit. The development of HDM is part of the HYTEA project, carried on by a European consortium, aiming at the development of a set of authoring tools for an "engineered" development of Hypertext-Hypermedia applications. A HYTEA application is made by an HDM schema and an HDM Hyperbase (i.e., a set of instances). The basic HDM has already been shown to be translatable, either manually or through a compiler, into a node-and-link model ("a la DEXTER model"; the translated application can be targeted on several implementation tools (i.e., standard Hypertext tools already available on the market). HDM has already been used to develop a (small number) of applications, and to describe preexisting applications. These experiments have shown the need for improvements that are discussed in the paper: aggregate entities; sharing of components; is-a relationships and inheritance between entity types; sharing of bodies; structured access and "guided tours"; use of active media (animations and video-clips).”
“It has been shown that the famous problem of user disorientation in hypertext is not due to the concept of hypertext itself but rather generally results from the lack of a conceptual model for hypertext application. Unfortunately, in most hypertext systems, the weakness of structure specification mechanisms discourages the development and use of such a model since it is difficult to reinforce hypertext structure and to really incorporate knowledge. A lot of works provide intelligent mechanisms to help navigation but either they use external knowledge or automatically synthesize links from information included in nodes which thereby have no sufficient conceptual value. The present paper focuses on an object-oriented hypertext model (implemented in the MacWeb system) using structured types to incorporate knowledge in hypertexts. Concepts and their relationships as well as their instances and their own relationships may be represented. Such a model makes the capture of knowledge at source easier thus allowing a more conceptual navigation. Furthermore, active behaviors may be associated, as methods, to types. This provides a powerful mechanism to help develop structured hypertext as well as task centered applications, by taking advantage of knowledge representation.”
“This paper addresses combining hypertext with knowledge representation as used in knowledge-based systems. Hypertext imposes explicit structure on text, whereas certain knowledge representation formalisms of AI are designed for structuring knowledge. We propose a way of tightly integrating hypertext and structured object representation, using (AI) frames for the basic representation of hypertext nodes. Moreover, we allow for the additional option of explicit representation of structure using partitions of hypertext nodes, which are realized as slots. In order to make the text more dynamic, our approach facilitates some aspects of object-oriented programming using message passing from the text in the browser. The proposed tight integration is useful for design tasks, in particular for building knowledge-based systems. According to our experience, hypertext provides a useful intermediary representation of knowledge between informal and formal. Based on a level of basic hypertext functionality, we provide several features useful for supporting knowledge acquisition. As an example of our results of using this method of knowledge acquisition, we illustrate the strategic knowledge in our application domain. In addition, tight integration supports important aspects of software engineering and the user interface. Moreover, we discuss several advantages from a hypertext point of view. In particular, the partitions of hypertext nodes can be useful for selective inheritance of text. In summary, both AI and hypertext will benefit from such a tight integration.”
“Some of the original goals of hypertext were accessibility, seamlessness, and connectivity. Yet most implementations of hypertext are still bound to large, immobile workstations, are operated with keyboards and mice and a reasonably complex interface, and are often focused on standalone, rather than connected, tasks. With the advent of pen-computing, we are beginning to see linking as a fundamental operating system and user interface component. In GO's PenPoint operating system, any selection in any notebook page can be linked to a selection on another page through the means of a simple pen gesture. The ability to create and follow links with a mere gesture creates a new level of accessibility to hypertext. Similarly, applications built on PenPoint are exploiting the pen interface for new generations of electronic book technology, in which browsing and search for information can be done without keyboard and mouse, in which annotation can be done with computerized "ink" and in which remote, wireless connectivity serves as a major new component. The demonstration will show each of these technologies and explain the fundamental basis behind each of these technologies.”
“WALT (Washington University's Approach to Lots of Text), is a prototype interface designed to support hypertext and information retrieval research. The WALT hypertext interface can serve as a "front end" to a wide array of retrieval engines including those based on Boolean retrieval, latent semantic indexing, term frequency - inverse document frequency, and Bayesian inference techniques. The WALT interface is composed of seven distinct components: a document examination component known as the Document Browsing Area; four navigation components called the Book Shelf, the Book Spine, the Table of Contents, and the Path Clipboard; a term-based information retrieval component called Control Panel; and a relevance feedback component known as the Reader Feedback Panel. All browsing and navigation components incorporate "active text" and explicit hypertext links. WALT's most unique feature may be it's use of "book shelf" and "book spine" metaphors both to facilitate navigation and to provide a histogram-based display showing documents deemed appropriate for answering user queries.”
“Copyright law is being applied to works in digital form. The special character of digital media will inevitably require some adjustments in the copyright model if digital libraries and hypertext publishing environments are to become as commercially viable as the print industries have been. An intellectual property system works only when it embodies a reasonably accurate model of how people are likely to behave, but it is hard to predict author and reader behavior in an environment that has yet to be built. By far the most ambitious proposal for a digital library and hypertext publishing environment is Ted Nelson's Xanadu system. This paper reviews the intellectual property scheme in Xanadu and contrasts it with current copyright law. Xanadu's predictions about reader and author behavior are examined in light of how people currently behave in computer conferencing, electronic mail, and similar existing systems. These analyses identify some respects in which intellectual property systems might have to be changed to make digital libraries and hypertext publishing systems viable.”
“The Applications Navigator is an hypertext publishing solution adopted by a supercomputer manufacturer for circulating scientific information amongst its user community. Hypertext is the preferred medium for delivering complex and dynamic information because it provides a self-explanatory interface, facilitates direct searching and also encourages more general exploration, via browsing facilities. However the hypertext systems currently available do not provide proper tools for administrators of larger databases. Thus, we designed and implemented a system comprising two components: a relational back-end database and an hypertextual front-end. The back-end is designed to address the needs of database administrators: a robust and fast database management engine for data entry and update with consistency checks, flexible reporting and printing, and multiuser access. The front-end is published and distributed periodically via floppy disk to users, who need a fast, easy-to-install and easy-to-use read-only environment for browsing and searching information.”
“To generate intelligent indexing that allows context-sensitive information retrieval, a system must be able to acquire knowledge directly through interaction with users. In this paper, we present the architecture for CID (Computer Integrated Documentation), a system that enables integration of various technical documents in a hypertext framework and includes an intelligent browsing system that incorporates indexing in context. CID's knowledge-based indexing mechanism allows case-based knowledge acquisition by experimentation. It utilizes on-line user information requirements and suggestions either to reinforce current indexing in case of success or to generate new knowledge in case of failure. This allows CID's intelligent interface system to provide helpful responses, even when no a priori user model is available. Our system in fact learns how to exploit a user model based on experience (from user feedback). We describe CID's current capabilities and provide an overview of our plans for extending the system.”
“Hypertext systems are being used in many applications because of their flexible structure and the great browsing freedom they give to diverse communities of users. However, this same freedom and flexibility is the cause of one of its main problem: the "lost in hyperspace" problem. One reason for the complexity of hypertext databases is the large number of nodes and links that compose them. To simplify this structure we propose that nodes and links be clustered forming more abstract structures. An abstraction is the concealment of all but relevant properties from an object or concept. One type of abstraction is called an aggregate. An aggregate is a set of distinct concepts that taken together form a more abstract concept. For example, two legs, a trunk, two arms and a head can be aggregate together in a single higher level object called a "body." In this paper we will study the hypertext structure, i.e., the way nodes are linked to each other in order to find aggregates in hypertext databases. Two graph theoretical algorithms will be used: biconnected components and strongly connected components.”
“In order to combine hypertext with database facilities, we show how to extract an effective storage structure from given instance relationships. The schema of the structure recognizes clusters and exceptions. Extracting high-level structures is useful for providing a high performance browsing environment as well as efficient physical database design, especially when handling large amounts of data. This paper focuses on a clustering method, ACE, which generates aggregations and exceptions from the original graph structure in order to capture high-level relationships. The problem of minimizing the cost function is NP-complete. We use a heuristic approach based on an extended Kernighan-Lin algorithm. We demonstrate our method on a hypertext application and on a standard random graph, compared with its analytical model. The storage reductions of”
“This paper addresses the issue of screen management in hypertext systems. It presents a new way of placing windows, or any graphical object delimited by rectangular boundaries, in the context of an existing set of windows. The heart of the technique presented is a particular re-scaling of the display which changes the locations of objects while maintaining their sizes and avoiding object overlapping. This functionality has uses both for authoring and browsing hypertext documents. In particular it enables the display of hierarchically structured information at various levels of detail and complements other visual graph management functions. More generally, the objective is to attenuate the feeling of disorientation users experience when related informations obtained through hypertext browsing are stacked upon a display screen. This work suggests extending hypertext systems by enabling users to create well structured information "collages" and to program animated presentations on the basis of browsing through ill or differently structured collections of documents.”
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More and more we're being asked to live with technology that is technically reliable, because it was created to fit our knowledge of the physical world, but that is so complex or so counterintuitive that it's actually unusable by most human beings.
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Mar 17th, 2010
