Computer graphics techniques for modeling page turning

Turning the page is a mechanical part of the cognitive act of reading that we do literally unthinkingly. Interest in realistic book models for digital libraries and other online documents is growing. Yet actually producing a computer graphics implementation for modeling page turning is a challenging undertaking. There are many possible foundations: two-dimensional models that use reflection and rotation; geometrical models using cylinders or cones; mass-spring models that simulate the mechanical properties of paper at varying degrees of fidelity; finite-element models that directly compute the actual forces within a piece of paper. Even the simplest methods are not trivial, and the more sophisticated ones involve detailed physical and mathematical models. The variety, intricacy and complexity of possible ways of simulating this fundamental act of reading is virtually unknown. This paper surveys computer graphics models for page turning. It combines a tutorial introduction that covers the range of possibilities and complexities with a mathematical synopsis of each model in sufficient detail to serve as a basis for implementation. Illustrations are included that are generated by our implementations of each model. The techniques presented include geometric methods (both two- and three-dimensional), mass-spring models with varying degrees of accuracy and complexity, and finite-element models. We include a detailed comparison of experimentally-determined computation time and subjective visual fidelity for all methods discussed. The simpler techniques support convincing real-time implementations on ordinary workstations

Realistic electronic books

People like books. They are convenient and can be accessed easily and enjoyably. In contrast, many view the experience of accessing and exploring electronic documents as dull, cumbersome and disorientating. This thesis claims that modelling digital documents as physical books can significantly improve reading performance. To investigate this claim, a realistic electronic book model was developed and evaluated. In this model, a range of properties associated with physical books---analogue page turning, bookmarks and annotations---are emulated. Advantage is also taken of the digital environment by supporting hyperlinks, multimedia, full-text search over terms and synonyms, automatically cross referencing documents with an online encyclopaedia, and producing a back-of-the-book index. The main technical challenge of simulating physical books is finding a suitable technique for page turning that is sufficiently realistic, yet lightweight, responsive, scalable and accessible. Several techniques were surveyed, implemented and evaluated. The chosen technique allows realistic books to be presented in the Adobe Flash Player, the most widely used browser plug-in on the Web. A series of usability studies were conducted to compare reading performance while performing various tasks with HTML, PDF, physical books, and simulated books. They revealed that participants not only preferred the new interface, but completed the tasks more efficiently, without any loss in accuracy

Creating and reading realistic electronic books

A digital library project aims to combine the look and feel of physical books with the advantages of online documents such as hyperlinks and multimedia. A lightweight open source implementation enables highly responsive page turning and works within standard Web browsers

Searching in a Book

Information has no value unless it is accessible. With physical books, most people rely on the table of contents and subject index to find what they want. But what if they are reading a book in a digital library and have access to a full-text search tool?. The paper describes a search interface to Realistic Books, and investigates the influence of document format and search result presentation on information finding. We compare searching in Realistic Books with searching in HTML and PDF files, and with physical books

Computer graphics techniques for modeling page turning

Turning the page is a mechanical part of the cognitive act of reading that we do literally unthinkingly. Interest in realistic book models for digital libraries and other online documents is growing. Yet, actually producing a computer graphics implementation for modeling page turning is a challenging undertaking. There are many possible foundations: two-dimensional models that use reflection and rotation; geometrical models using cylinders or cones; mass-spring models that simulate the mechanical properties of paper at varying degrees of fidelity; and finite-element models that directly compute the actual forces within a piece of paper. Even the simplest methods are not trivial, and the more sophisticated ones involve detailed physical and mathematical models. The variety, intricacy, and complexity of possible ways of simulating this fundamental act of reading is virtually unknown. This article surveys computer graphics models for page turning. It combines a tutorial introduction that covers the range of possibilities and complexities with a mathematical synopsis of each model in sufficient detail to serve as a basis for implementation. Illustrations are included, which are generated through our implementations of each model. The techniques presented include geometric methods (both two- and three-dimensional), mass-spring models with varying degrees of accuracy and complexity, and finite element models. We include a detailed comparison of experimentally determined computation time and subjective visual fidelity for all the methods discussed. The simpler techniques support convincing real-time implementations on ordinary workstations. We also address the question of whether such techniques are worthwhile in practice by describing results from a user study that compared the performance of a page turning book model with HTML and PDF presentations of the same material—and with physical books. This demonstrates that the book model has many advantages over conventional document formats

A bookmaker's workbench

We have been developing electronic Realistic Books that combine the natural advantages of electronic documents---full-text search, hyperlinks, animation, multimedia---with those of conventional books---the ambient information provided by the physical object, analog page turning, random-access navigation, bookmarks, highlighting and annotation. Although simple Realistic Books can easily be created from PDF or HTML files using a shell script or web service, it is not so easy for book designers to take advantage of advanced features that are not normally represented in the input files. This paper describes the Bookmaker's Workbench, an interactive system intended to help book designers produce Realistic Books. It incorporates many features, including a text mining option that automatically identifies significant key terms and marks them visually in the text, the ability to incorporate synonyms automatically into the full-text search capability, and include automatically generated back-of-the-book index. A user evaluation is reported that demonstrates the system's usability and learnability

Seeking information in realistic books: a user study

There are opposing views on whether readers gain any advantage from using a computer model of a 3D physical book. There is enough evidence, both anecdotal and from formal user studies, to suggest that the usual HTML or PDF presentation of documents is not always the most convenient, or the most comfortable, for the reader. On the other hand it is quite clear that while 3D book models have been prototyped and demonstrated, none are in routine use in today's digital libraries. And how do 3D book models compare with actual books? This paper reports on a user study designed to compare the performance of a practical Realistic Book implementation with conventional formats (HTML and PDF) and with physical books. It also evaluates the annotation features that the implementation provides

Realistic electronic books

We describe a software book model that emulates a range of properties associated with physical books—analog page turning, visual location cues, bookmarks and annotations—and, furthermore, incorporates many advantages of digital environments—hyperlinks, multimedia, full-text search, automatic identification of synonyms, cross-referencing of key terms with an online encyclopedia, and an automatically generated back-of-the-book index. Usability studies were conducted to compare performance using these books for various reading tasks with HTML, PDF and physical books. Participants completed the tasks more efficiently with the new interface without any loss in accuracy; they also preferred it

A process mining technique using pattern recognition

Several works have proposed process mining techniques to discover process models from event logs. With the existing works, mined models can be built based on analyzing the relationship between any two events seen in event logs. Being restricted by that, they can only handle special cases of routing constructs and often produce unsound models that do not cover all of the traces in the logs. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for process mining based on using a pattern recognition technique called Maximal Pattern Mining (MPM). Our MPM technique can handle loops (of any length), duplicate tasks, non-free choice constructs, and long distance dependencies. Furthermore, by using the MPM, the discovered models are generally much easier to understand