A collaborative-project memory tool for participatory planning

Technology is more and more providing planners and designer with tools and methods to collect and communicate spatial data and assist spatial analysis. When we think about new technologies supporting planning we mainly think about GIS, urban modelling, simulation models and virtual reality. But many other challenges to the planning practice need for tools to support and improve planning activities. In this paper we discuss the need of new tools to support knowledge representation and knowledge sharing in participatory planning processes. The paper describes the use of a hypermedia and sensemaking tool (Compendium) to structure the knowledge produced in a real participatory planning process. In the present application Compendium has been used not for real-time capturing but for a post-hoc analysis of a real participatory planning experience. Compendium has been used to represent and reconstruct the group memory of consultation meetings in order to allow both the planning team and the citizens to navigate into the contents of those meetings. Moreover the paper describes the main features and potential of the use of Compendium in Participatory Planning domain, and it describes the results of the group memory reconstruction. Finally the case study opens reflections on the need of new planning technologies supporting participatory knowledge generation, representation and management

Transclusion of document fragments from dynamic text

Transclusion is a concept that allows users to reuse document fragments from different source pages, not by duplicating it, but by including a reference to the original work. Thus, transclusion provides an interesting platform for authors to quote text from other documents in a way such that the quoted text can be compared alongside its original context, and changes in the original document are reflected automatically in the user document. Several researchers have partially implemented transclusion using various techniques and technologies. The issue of transcluding text from a dynamic source page still persists because dynamic content changes have not been reflected. This research was based on finding a solution to this problem. Encrypted transcluded text, along with its reference, was stored in the user\u27s document. Using this encrypted message, a document fragment was located in the dynamic source page such that encryption of that fragment matched most closely to the recorded encrypted message. This returned document fragment ensured that changes in the original source documents were reflected in the user\u27s document. A test set was created with a modified source file, transcluded text, number, nature, and percentage change in the source file. The expected outcome, and the document fragment returned based on the algorithm, were used to determine the accuracy of the algorithm. The average accuracy of the algorithm obtained for the entire test set was found to be 0.92. Moreover, for 60% of the test set the algorithm\u27s predicted result matched the expected outcome exactly. The algorithm turned out to be quite forgiving, as even when the source document changed 100%, the average accuracy still turned out to be more than 75%. Thus, the algorithm can be used as a framework to transclude document fragments from dynamic source pages. The connection between the user document and the source document is retained, and more importantly the changes in the source document are accurately reflected in the user document, thereby allowing users to present their ideas effectively, such that readers can comprehend the ideas presented in the document, and re-use them as a framework for establishing their own ideas

Design Features for the Social Web: The Architecture of Deme

We characterize the "social Web" and argue for several features that are desirable for users of socially oriented web applications. We describe the architecture of Deme, a web content management system (WCMS) and extensible framework, and show how it implements these desired features. We then compare Deme on our desiderata with other web technologies: traditional HTML, previous open source WCMSs (illustrated by Drupal), commercial Web 2.0 applications, and open-source, object-oriented web application frameworks. The analysis suggests that a WCMS can be well suited to building social websites if it makes more of the features of object-oriented programming, such as polymorphism, and class inheritance, available to non-programmers in an accessible vocabulary.Comment: Appeared in Luis Olsina, Oscar Pastor, Daniel Schwabe, Gustavo Rossi, and Marco Winckler (Editors), Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Web-Oriented Software Technologies (IWWOST 2009), CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Volume 493, August 2009, pp. 40-51; 12 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Evolution of documents - Information and Data objects

The vast amount of data leading to the digital data explosion highlights the fact that the current data definition needs a change as the current systems are unable to track the evolution in a document over time without manual intervention. The concepts of Information and Data objects are introduced in this thesis to track the evolution information in a document. We developed the requirements for such a system in which the evolution information is automatically tracked by tracking the user copy and paste action and then using the data to create the evolution information about a specified document. A case study is discussed to further analyse the information and data flow in a collaboration. We have used this knowledge to design the system and then to implement the system so that the user copy and paste actions can be tracked to create the evolution information. The implementation is then presented to a group of experts to identify the problems and to get the feedback to improve the system

The Digital Critical Edition of Fragments : Theoretical Problems and Technical Solutions

The process of creating a digital critical edition of fragmentary texts is also a valuable op- portunity to look at the nature of such texts under a new light. This paper contains some reflections about how the nature of fragments can be more appropriately represented in a digital critical edition and what challenges this task poses

Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson

History of Computing; Computer Appl. in Arts and Humanities; Data Structures; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interactio

Wikisource and the Scholarly Book

Wikisource, a project of the Wikimedia foundation, is a growing online library aiming to provide well-edited texts thanks to an army of volunteers. In this paper, I try to assess the strengths of this project as well as its shortcomings and I make some suggestions that, if adopted, would make Wikisource the ultimate platform for reading and editing scholarly books