Perspectives for Electronic Books in the World Wide Web Age

While the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) is steadily expanding, electronic books (e-books) remain a niche market. In this article, it is first postulated that specialized contents and device independence can make Web-based e-books compete with paper prints; and that adaptive features that can be implemented by client-side computing are relevant for e-books, while more complex forms of adaptation requiring server-side computations are not. Then, enhancements of the WWW standards (specifically of XML, XHTML, of the style-sheet languages CSS and XSL, and of the linking language XLink) are proposed for a better support of client-side adaptation and device independent content modeling. Finally, advanced browsing functionalities desirable for e-books as well as their implementation in the WWW context are described

Adaptive Hypermedia made simple using HTML/XML Style Sheet Selectors

This paper addresses enhancing HTML and XML with adaptation functionalities. The approach consists in using the path selectors of the HTML and XML style sheet languages CSS and XSLT for expressing content and navigation adaptation. Thus, the necessary extensions of the selector languages are minimal (a few additional constructs suffice), the processors of these languages can be kept almost unchanged, and no new algorithms are needed. In addition, XML is used for expressing the user model data like browsing history, browsing environment (such as device, location, time, etc.), and application data (such as user performances on exercises). The goal of the research presented here is not to propose novel forms or applications of adaptation, but instead to extend widespread web standards with adaptation functionalities. Essential features of the proposed approach are its simplicity and both the upwards and downwards compatibility of the extension

A Programming Language for Web Service Development

There is now widespread acceptance of Web services and service-oriented architectures. But despite the agreement on key Web services standards there remain many challenges. Programming environments based on WSDL support go some way to facilitating Web service development. However Web services fundamentally rely on XML and Schema, not on contemporary programming language type systems such as those of Java or .NET. Moreover, Web services are based on a messaging paradigm and hence bring forward the traditional problems of messaging systems including concurrency control and message correlation. It is easy to write simple synchronous Web services using traditional programming languages; however more realistic scenarios are surprisingly difficult to implement. To alleviate these issues we propose a programming language which directly supports Web service development. The language leverages XQuery for native XML processing, supports implicit message correlation and has high level join calculus-style concurrency control. We illustrate the features of the language through a motivating example

Experience in using a typed functional language for the development of a security application

In this paper we present our experience in developing a security application using a typed functional language. We describe how the formal grounding of its semantic and compiler have allowed for a trustworthy development and have facilitated the fulfillment of the security specification.Comment: In Proceedings F-IDE 2014, arXiv:1404.578

Stress relaxation and elastic follow-up using a stress range-dependent constitutive model

Despite the availability of detailed nonlinear finite element analysis, some aspects of high temperature design can still be best addressed through more simplified methods. One such simplified method relates to the problem of elastic follow-up where typically in strain-controlled situations, elastic behaviour in one part of a structure can lead to large strain accumulation in another. Over the past thirty years it has been shown that in regions with significant elastic follow-up a plot of maximum stress against strain (a 'stress-strain trajectory') is virtually independent of the constitutive relation - a characteristic which can be used to estimate elastic follow-up for design purposes without detailed nonlinear finite element analysis. The majority of studies which have reported this independence on material behaviour have used simple constitutive models for creep strain, primarily based on power law creep or variations. Recently studies of the behaviour of high temperature structures with a stress range dependent constitutive law have begun to emerge. This paper examines the problem of elastic follow-up using such a constitutive law for a classic two-bar structure and for a more complex structure using finite element analysis. It is found that the independence of the stress-strain trajectory on constitutive equation is lost with a stress range dependent relation