Electronic Publishing Series – serie

This volume tells the story of the Microcosm hypermedia research and development project that started in the late 1980s and from which has emerged a philosophy that re-examines the whole concept of hypermedia and its role in the evolution of multimedia information systems. The book presents the complete story of Microcosm to date. It sets the development of Microcosm in the context of the history of the subject from which it evolved, as well as the developments in the wider world of technology over the last two decades, including personal computing, high-speed communications and the growth of the Internet. These all lead towards a world of global integrated information environments: the publishing revolution of the 20th century, in principle making vast amounts of information available to anybody anywhere in the world. This book explains the role that open hypermedia systems and link services will play in the integrated information environments of the future.It considers issues such as authoring, legacy systems and data integrity issues, and looks beyond the simple hypertext model provided in the World Wide Web and other systems today to the world of intelligent information-processing agents that will help us deal with the problems of information overload and maintenance. This volume aims to help all those who are involved in designing, implementing and maintaining hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web by setting the groundwork for producing a system that is both easy to use and easy to maintain.

This work sets out the essentials of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the authoring language for the World Wide Web. It explains the principles of the Web, the operation of its servers and browsers, how to author WWW fill-out forms, WWW front pages, home pages, entry pages and root pages, and how to perform special HTML applications such as converting formatted documents to HTML.

Information Retrieval (IR) has concentrated on the development of information management systems to support user retrieval from large collections of homogeneous textual material. A variety of approaches have been tried and tested with varying degrees of success over many decades of research. Hypertext (HT) systems, on the other hand, provide a retrieval paradigm based on browsing through a structured information space, following pre-defined connections between information fragments until an information need is satisfied, or appears to be. This volume addresses the confluence of the areas of IR and HT and explores the work done in applying techniques from one area, to the other leading to the development of "hypertext information retrieval" (HIR) systems. An important aspect of the work in IR/HT and in any user-centred information system is the emergence of multimedia information and such multimedia information is treated as an integral information type in this text.

This work is similar, but not quite the same kind of thing as an online FAQ or "Frequently Asked Questions" list. It addresses questions from people who already actually use SGML in some way (including HTML authors), and people who are about to use it. It deals mainly with issues that arise when using SGML in practice. A very brief introduction to SGML is included as Appendix A. The questions discussed in the book are repeatedly heard by people who make their living serving the SGML community. SGML experts spend many hours teaching these details, sometimes repeatedly because some questions do not seem important - until you run into them. So one benefit of this book is learning more of the art of document creation and management, both by general reading before questions arise and by specific reference when a question arises. For the latter use, the appendices, glossary, and index are particularly important. A second benefit of this book is that it provides a common theme to its answers that can be applied in the use of SGML, HTML and related languages in general.The fundamental answer to many of the questions reduces to "simplify": many questions do not show up if you use the simple, elegant core of SGML without worrying about optional features. The credo of this book is simply, "SGML doesn't need to be complicated". SGML has the potential for complexity at certain points. But much of the complexity comes from optional parts and can be avoided. SGML methodology and its primary benefits suffer no loss even if you skip many features, which speaks well for the quality of SGML's overall design. Many of the questions discussed involve those optional parts, and therefore can be avoided by judicious designers and authors. The two main goals of this text are: to answer questions that SGML users may actually encounter, and to help them get "unstuck" and be as productive as possible in using the language; and to show proactive ways to simplify the use of SGML, and get its benefits with minimal complexity.

Rethinking Hypermedia: The Microcosm Approach is essentially the story of the Microcosm hypermedia research and development project that started in the late 1980's and from which has emerged a philosophy that re-examines the whole concept of hypermedia and its role in the evolution of multimedia information systems. The book presents the complete story of Microcosm to date. It sets the development of Microcosm in the context of the history of the subject from which it evolved, as well as the developments in the wider world of technology over the last two decades including personal computing, high-speed communications, and the growth of the Internet. These all lead us towards a world of global integrated information environments: the publishing revolution of the 20th century, in principle making vast amounts of information available to anybody anywhere in the world. Rethinking Hypermedia: The Microcosm Approach explains the role that open hypermedia systems and link services will play in the integrated information environments of the future. It considers issues such as authoring, legacy systems and data integrity issues, and looks beyond the simple hypertext model provided in the World Wide Web and other systems today to the world of intelligent information processing agents that will help us deal with the problems of information overload and maintenance. Rethinking Hypermedia: The Microcosm Approach will be of interest to all those who are involved in designing, implementing and maintaining hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web by setting the groundwork for producing a system that is both easy to use and easy to maintain. Rethinking Hypermedia: The Microcosm Approach is essential reading for anyone involved in the provision of online information.

HTML and the Art of Authoring For the World Wide Web is devoted to teaching the Web user how to generate good hypertext. `As a result of (this) rapid uncontrolled growth, the Web community may be facing a `hypertext crisis'. Thousands of hastily written or ill conceived documents may soon be presented to readers poorly formatted or unusable... .' (From the Preface.) `The clear and practical ways in which HTML and the Art of Authoring For the World Wide Web sets forth the principles of the Web, the operation of its servers and browsers, and its publishing concept is commendable. It will be an indispensable guide to the Web author as well as the sophisticated user.' (From the Foreword by Robert Cailliau.) `Despite its user friendliness, the Web has, by its own virtue, a default that makes it difficult for people to know where to begin: there is no starting point to the Web. Bebo White's HTML and the Art of Authoring For the World Wide Web will fill this gap immediately, as it provides a clear, introductory and sequential description of the fundamental concepts that lie underneath the Web. It describes HTML as an SGML application, explains the relationship between HTML and SGML, and gives a complete description of all the structure that HTML provides.' (From the Foreword by Eric van Herwijnen.)

Information Retrieval (IR) has concentrated on the development of information management systems to support user retrieval from large collections of homogeneous textual material. A variety of approaches have been tried and tested with varying degrees of success over many decades of research. Hypertext (HT) systems, on the other hand, provide a retrieval paradigm based on browsing through a structured information space, following pre-defined connections between information fragments until an information need is satisfied, or appears to be. Information Retrieval and Hypertext addresses the confluence of the areas of IR and HT and explores the work done to date in applying techniques from one area, to the other leading to the development of `hypertext information retrieval' (HIR) systems. An important aspect of the work in IR/HT and in any user-centred information system is the emergence of multimedia information and such multimedia information istreated as an integral information type in this text. The contributed chapters cover the development of integrated hypertext information retrieval models, and the application of IR and HT techniques in hypertext construction and the approaches that can be taken in searching HIR systems. These chapters are complemented by two overview chapters covering, respectively, information retrieval and hypertext research and developments. Information Retrieval and Hypertext is important as it is the first text to directly address the combined searching/browsing paradigm of information discovery which is becoming so important in modern computing environments. It will be of interest to researchers and professionals working in a range of areas related to information discovery.