Introducing Collaboration in Single-user Applications through the Centralized Control Architecture

In this paper we describe a novel Model-View­ Controller based architecture, Centralized Control, that intro­duces collaboration in single-users applications. The architecture is able to add collaboration with no need to modify the source code of the original single-user application, and providing also the capability to introduce group semantics into the new, collab­orative application that is obtained. The architecture is shown in practice, by introducing CollabXMind, a collaborative mind map tool, that is based on a well-known single-user tool, XMind

Utilização do rastreamento ocular para visualização do local de atenção em sistemas de edição colaborativos

Awareness in computing is the knowledge about the present and past group’s activities, which is a relevant issue for cooperative work. There are many devices that supply awareness information in synchronous collaborative editing systems. However, the current awareness devices have restrictions to provide awareness more effectively and to capture the focus of attention, i.e. identify the exact place of the participants’ attentions. This paper presents an awareness device for synchronous collaborative editing systems called TeleEye, which provides information about the place of the participant’s attention during a collaborative session by means of eye tracking.Keywords: attention, collaboration, awareness, eye tracking.Awareness (percepção), em computação, é o conhecimento sobre as atividades passadas e presentes do grupo, que constitui uma questão relevante para o trabalho cooperativo. Existem diversos mecanismos que fornecem a percepção durante o uso de sistemas de edição colaborativos síncronos. Contudo, os mecanismos de percepção existentes evidenciam restrições, ao proporcionarem efetivamente a percepção e a captura do foco de atenção, isto é, ao identificarem o local exato da atenção dos participantes. Este artigo apresenta um mecanismo de percepção para sistemas de edição colaborativos síncronos chamado TeleEye, o qual fornece informações sobre o local da atenção dos participantes durante uma seção colaborativa com o auxílio de Rastreio Ocular.Palavras-chave: atenção, colaboração, percepção, rastreamento ocular

Developing Collaborative XML Editing Systems

In many areas the eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML) is becoming the standard exchange and data format. More and more applications not only support XML as an exchange format but also use it as their data model or default file format for graphic, text and database (such as spreadsheet) applications. Computer Supported Cooperative Work is an interdisciplinary field of research dealing with group work, cooperation and their supporting information and communication technologies. One part of it is Real-Time Collaborative Editing, which investigates the design of systems which allow several persons to work simultaneously in real-time on the same document, without the risk of inconsistencies. Existing collaborative editing research applications specialize in one or at best, only a small number of document types; for example graphic, text or spreadsheet documents. This research investigates the development of a software framework which allows collaborative editing of any XML document type in real-time. This presents a more versatile solution to the problems of real-time collaborative editing. This research contributes a new software framework model which will assist software engineers in the development of new collaborative XML editing applications. The devised framework is flexible in the sense that it is easily adaptable to different workflow requirements covering concurrency control, awareness mechanisms and optional locking of document parts. Additionally this thesis contributes a new framework integration strategy that enables enhancements of existing single-user editing applications with real-time collaborative editing features without changing their source code