Journal of Digital Information (Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
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252 research outputs found
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Hypertext to Knowledge to Workflow
No full textThe engineering hypothesis is that a hypertext-like, collaborative authoring system can provide an appropriate infrastructure for a knowledge and workflow management system. A hierarchical, hypertext infrastructure with typed, multi-attributed nodes provides the platform. People perform their scheduled activities by creating nodes in the system and they comment on one another\u27s work. Such a system has been designed and built, as documented here. The engineering result suggests new issues for the design of the next generation of the system. The experimental hypothesis is that people will use such a system to manage knowledge and work. Knowledge management has been successfully supported in a software engineering team. Workflow management was only partly supported for these software engineers in part because they often relied on informal working methods that did not match well the scheduling capabilities of the system
Hypertext Syntagmas: Cinematic Narration with Links
No full textChristian Metz\u27s semiotic analysis of cinema is described in relation to hypertext narrative. Connections between film narrative syntagmas and hypertextual syntagmas are explored, with an emphasis on the contextual and pragmatic nature of these structures
RDF Declarative Description (RDD): A Language for Metadata
No full textRDF Declarative Description (RDD) is a metadata modeling language which extends RDF(S) expressiveness by provision of generic means for succinct and uniform representation of metadata, their relationships, rules and axioms. Through its expressive mechanism, RDD can directly represent all RDF-based languages such as OIL and DAML-family markup languages (e.g., DAML+OIL and DAML-S), and hence allows their intended meanings to be determined directly without employment of other formalisms. Therefore, RDD readily enables interchangeability, interoperability as well as integrability of metadata applications, developed independently by different communities and exploiting different schemas and languages. Moreover, RDD is also equipped with computation and query-processing mechanisms.
Keywords: Metadata, RDF, RDF Schema, RDF Declarative Description, RDD language
Many Outputs — Many Inputs: XML for Publishers and E-book Designers
No full textThis essay questions the XML doctrine of "one input — many outputs". In the area of publishing the doctrine says that from one book one can produce many formats and end-products. Supported by insights of linguistics and experiences of writers and editors, I shall claim this assertion to be basically wrong. By examining the main properties of XML I will further, in contrast to the doctrine, argue that XML and related technologies add to the complexity of publishing. New media, new formats and new genres will, powered by XML, lead publishers into a new and challenging state of "many outputs — many inputs"
Linking Chan/Seon/Zen Figures and Their Texts: Problems and Developments in the Construction of a Relational Database
No full textIssues related to the construction of a database on Buddhist historical figures and their written legacy are discussed in the paper, which deliberately takes the researcher\u27s point of view, reviewing concrete examples rather than elaborating on technical issues. One part of the IRIZ "Zen Knowledge Base" project initiated by Urs App is to establish a unique ID number for each Chan/Seon/Zen figure, thereby enabling each author to be linked with the extant documents. The primary stages of this project having now been completed, the paper presents some initial results and working hypotheses [see endnote], and reflects on wider issues related to the digitization of Buddhist research materials
Towards a General Relation Browser: A GUI for Information Architects
No full textThe paper presents the case of ongoing efforts to develop and test generalizable user interfaces that provide interactive overviews for large-scale Web sites, portals, and other partitions of Web space. The interfaces are called Relation Browsers (RB) because they help people explore the relationships across different attribute sets, thus enabling understanding the scope and extent of the corpus through active exploration of different "slices" defined by different attribute value juxtapositions. The RB concept is illustrated through discussion of six iterations over a five year period that included laboratory usability studies, a field test, and implementations with a variety of data management problems. The current application to design concepts in a digital government setting is discussed, and the concept of the RB as the basis for an interface server is presented
Counting the Costs of Digital Preservation: Is Repository Storage Affordable?
No full textThe Harvard University Library and the Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) each manage centralized repositories optimized for long-term storage of library collections. Both organizations fully recover operational expenses by charging owners annual rates for managed storage services, regardless of materials use. The Harvard Depository assesses rates for analog storage per billable square foot. The OCLC Digital Archive assesses rates per gigabyte for storage of digital objects. Formats are significant, but not sole factors in determining preservation costs in these models. Owners’ definitions of content integrity and tolerance for risk, which can change over time, are also important variables in the complex equation of preservation costs and affordability
Unified Hyperstructures for Bioinformatics: Escaping the Application Prison
No full textThe Next Big Thing in hypertext will be unifying different applications in bioinformatics through the ZigZag paradigm, allowing this field to live up to its promise of revolutionising the pharmaceutical industry. The paper outlines ZigZag, Ted Nelson\u27s unique hyperstructural paradigm, and illustrates how, by examining a current bioinformatics task such as structure/binding prediction, the application of this novel paradigm has the potential to revolutionise bioinformatics completely by allowing a unified approach to a task currently fulfilled by fragmented data and applications
The Indirect Authoring Paradigm – Bringing Hypertext into the Web
No full textBuilding hypertext systems to provide the required functionality to write hypertexts has always been a goal of hypertext research. The parallel development of hypertext research prototypes and the World Wide Web has resulted in repeated attempts to replace the Web or offer world-wide all-purpose services to augment the Web with "missing" functionality. The paper argues that focusing on the development of tools that offer support to hypertext authors for specific tasks is a necessary first step for the introduction of sophisticated hypertext features into the Web. Following a brief history of interaction with the Web, we demonstrate why authoring tools for the Web are a critical target for efforts to extend the use of hypertexts in the Web. We introduce indirect authoring as a label for a shared characteristic of different approaches that try to reduce the complexity and cognitive overhead involved in authoring hypertext. Drawing on this analysis, we lay out some consequences for hypertext research. We provide pointers to projects that have started to experinment with indirect authoring, and list immediate research questions. Developing a diversity of task-oriented authoring tools to reduce the cognitive overhead for authoring hypertexts could change the face of the Web