An Open Framework for Integrating Widely Distributed Hypermedia Resources

The success of the WWW has served as an illustration of how hypermedia functionality can enhance access to large amounts of distributed information. However, the WWW and many other distributed hypermedia systems offer very simple forms of hypermedia functionality which are not easily applied to existing applications and data formats, and cannot easily incorporate alternative functions which would aid hypermedia navigation to and from existing documents that have not been developed with hypermedia access in mind. This paper describes the extension to a distributed environment of the open hypermedia functionality of the Microcosm system, which is designed to support the provision of hypermedia access to a wide range of source material and application, and to offer straightforward extension of the system to incorporate new forms of information access

A Process Framework for Semantics-aware Tourism Information Systems

The growing sophistication of user requirements in tourism due to the advent of new technologies such as the Semantic Web and mobile computing has imposed new possibilities for improved intelligence in Tourism Information Systems (TIS). Traditional software engineering and web engineering approaches cannot suffice, hence the need to find new product development approaches that would sufficiently enable the next generation of TIS. The next generation of TIS are expected among other things to: enable semantics-based information processing, exhibit natural language capabilities, facilitate inter-organization exchange of information in a seamless way, and evolve proactively in tandem with dynamic user requirements. In this paper, a product development approach called Product Line for Ontology-based Semantics-Aware Tourism Information Systems (PLOSATIS) which is a novel hybridization of software product line engineering, and Semantic Web engineering concepts is proposed. PLOSATIS is presented as potentially effective, predictable and amenable to software process improvement initiatives

Encyclopedia of software components

Intelligent browsing through a collection of reusable software components is facilitated with a computer having a video monitor and a user input interface such as a keyboard or a mouse for transmitting user selections, by presenting a picture of encyclopedia volumes with respective visible labels referring to types of software, in accordance with a metaphor in which each volume includes a page having a list of general topics under the software type of the volume and pages having lists of software components for each one of the generic topics, altering the picture to open one of the volumes in response to an initial user selection specifying the one volume to display on the monitor a picture of the page thereof having the list of general topics and altering the picture to display the page thereof having a list of software components under one of the general topics in response to a next user selection specifying the one general topic, and then presenting a picture of a set of different informative plates depicting different types of information about one of the software components in response to a further user selection specifying the one component

Sensemaking on the Pragmatic Web: A Hypermedia Discourse Perspective

The complexity of the dilemmas we face on an organizational, societal and global scale forces us into sensemaking activity. We need tools for expressing and contesting perspectives flexible enough for real time use in meetings, structured enough to help manage longer term memory, and powerful enough to filter the complexity of extended deliberation and debate on an organizational or global scale. This has been the motivation for a programme of basic and applied action research into Hypermedia Discourse, which draws on research in hypertext, information visualization, argumentation, modelling, and meeting facilitation. This paper proposes that this strand of work shares a key principle behind the Pragmatic Web concept, namely, the need to take seriously diverse perspectives and the processes of meaning negotiation. Moreover, it is argued that the hypermedia discourse tools described instantiate this principle in practical tools which permit end-user control over modelling approaches in the absence of consensus

Hypermedia support for argumentation-based rationale: 15 years on from gIBIS and QOC

Having developed, used and evaluated some of the early IBIS-based approaches to design rationale (DR) such as gIBIS and QOC in the late 1980s/mid-1990s, we describe the subsequent evolution of the argumentation-based paradigm through software support, and perspectives drawn from modeling and meeting facilitation. Particular attention is given to the challenge of negotiating the overheads of capturing this form of rationale. Our approach has maintained a strong emphasis on keeping the representational scheme as simple as possible to enable real time meeting mediation and capture, attending explicitly to the skills required to use the approach well, particularly for the sort of participatory, multi-stakeholder requirements analysis demanded by many design problems. However, we can then specialize the notation and the way in which the tool is used in the service of specific methodologies, supported by a customizable hypermedia environment, and interoperable with other software tools. After presenting this approach, called Compendium, we present examples to illustrate the capabilities for support security argumentation in requirements engineering, template driven modeling for document generation, and IBIS-based indexing of and navigation around video records of meetings

Applying digital content management to support localisation

The retrieval and presentation of digital content such as that on the World Wide Web (WWW) is a substantial area of research. While recent years have seen huge expansion in the size of web-based archives that can be searched efficiently by commercial search engines, the presentation of potentially relevant content is still limited to ranked document lists represented by simple text snippets or image keyframe surrogates. There is expanding interest in techniques to personalise the presentation of content to improve the richness and effectiveness of the user experience. One of the most significant challenges to achieving this is the increasingly multilingual nature of this data, and the need to provide suitably localised responses to users based on this content. The Digital Content Management (DCM) track of the Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) is seeking to develop technologies to support advanced personalised access and presentation of information by combining elements from the existing research areas of Adaptive Hypermedia and Information Retrieval. The combination of these technologies is intended to produce significant improvements in the way users access information. We review key features of these technologies and introduce early ideas for how these technologies can support localisation and localised content before concluding with some impressions of future directions in DCM