HM-Card: A new hypermedia authoring system

HM-Card is a novel hypermedia authoring and presentation system for the development and use of a diverse range of hypermedia applications on PCs/MS-Windows. It is the first tool to implement the HM data model, a recent approach to provide a sound theoretical basis for the sophisticated structuring and navigating of hypermedia databases. However, in this paper we only cover the HM data model as the underlying theoretical foundation for the actual authoring system HM-Card. HM-Card offers an extensive set of functional and structural authoring elements, such as animations, question/answer dialogs, transparent import of external documents, and execution of other MS-Windows applications. The user-interface of HM-Card is intended to support rapid prototyping and authoring of complex hypermedia applications. Finished HM-Card applications can be run as stand-alone systems, used in MS-Windows' OLE (Object Linking and Embedding concept) clients, as well as be integrated as modules into large-scale distributed hypermedia systems.     

A hypermedia authoring tool for augmented and virtual reality

Most existing hypermedia authoring systems are intended for use on desktop computers. These systems are typically designed for the creation of 2D documents and therefore employ 2D authoring mechanisms. In contrast, authoring systems for nontraditional multimedia/hypermedia experiences for 3D virtual or augmented worlds focus mainly on creating separate media objects and embedding them within the user's surroundings. As a result, linking these media objects to create 3D hypermedia is a tedious manual task. To address this issue, we present an authoring tool for creating and editing linked 3D hypermedia narratives that are interwoven with a wearable computer user's surrounding environment. Our system is designed for use by authors who are not programmers, and allows them to preview their results on a desktop workstation, as well as with an augmented or virtual reality system.     

Overcoming the pitfalls of ontology authoring: Strategies and implications for tool design

The process of authoring ontologies appears to be fragmented across several tools and workarounds, and there exists no well accepted framework for common authoring tasks such as exploring ontologies, comparing versions, debugging, and testing. This lack of an adequate and seamless tool chain potentially hinders the broad uptake of ontologies, especially OWL, as a knowledge representation formalism. We start to address this situation by presenting insights from an interview-based study with 15 ontology experts. We uncover the tensions that may emerge between ontology authors including antagonistic ontology building styles (definition-driven vs. manually crafted hierarchies). We identify the problems reported by the ontology authors and the strategies they employ to solve them. These data are mapped to a set of key design recommendations, which should inform and guide future efforts for improving ontology authoring tool support, thus opening up ontology authoring to a new generation of users. We discuss future research avenues in light of these results.     

A new AR authoring tool using depth maps for industrial procedures

Several augmented reality systems have been proposed for different target fields such as medical, cultural heritage and military. However, most of the current AR authoring tools are actually programming interfaces that are exclusively suitable for programmers. In this paper, we propose an AR authoring tool which provides advanced visual effect, such as occlusion or media contents. This tool allows non-programming users to develop low-cost AR applications, specially oriented to on-site assembly and maintenance/repair tasks. A new 3D edition interface is proposed, using photos and Kinect depth information to improve 3D scenes composition. In order to validate our AR authoring tool, two evaluations have been performed, to test the authoring process and the task execution using AR. The evaluation results show that overlaying 3D instructions on the actual work pieces reduces the error rate for an assembly task by more than a 75%, particularly diminishing cumulative errors common in sequential procedures. Also, the results show how the new edition interface proposed, improves the 3D authoring process making possible create more accurate AR scenarios and 70% faster.     

Computer experience, learning style, and hypermedia navigation

This study focused on the extent to which prior computer-related experiences predicted linear and nonlinear navigation when using a hypermedia learning environment. Those with more years’ experience at working with computers and those with more authoring experience took more linear steps, whereas those with more data base experience and those with more hypermedia experience took fewer linear steps. Those with more years experience at working with computers, those with more programming experience, and those with more authoring experience had a lower percentage of nonlinear steps than those with more experience in those three areas. Those with more word-processing experience, more spreadsheet experience, and more hypermedia experience had a higher percentage of nonlinear steps than those with less experience in those three areas. Also, those with more hypermedia experience took less time than those with less hypermedia experience. A major implication of the study is that we can predict the extent to which a hypermedia user may engage in a hypermedia environment in a nonlinear way by knowing his or her experience in a variety of computer-related uses.     

An approach for automatic generation of adaptive hypermedia in education with multilingual knowledge discovery techniques

This work describes a framework that combines techniques from Adaptive Hypermedia and Natural Language processing in order to create, in a fully automated way, on-line information systems from linear texts in electronic format, such as textbooks. The process is divided into two steps: an off-line processing step, which analyses the source text, and an on-line step, which executes when a user connects to the system with a web browser, moment at which the contents and hyperlinks are generated. The framework has been implemented as the Welkin system, which has been used to build three adaptive on-line information sites in a quick and easy way. Some controlled experiments have been performed with real users aimed to provide positive feedback on the implementation of the system.     

Modelling hypermedia and web applications: the Ariadne Development Method

The development process of hypermedia and web systems poses very specific problems that do not appear in other software applications, such as the need for mechanisms to model sophisticated navigational structures, interactive behaviors, interfaces with external applications, security constraints and multimedia compositions. Even though experience, modelling skills and abstractions can be borrowed from existing software design methods, such as object-oriented modelling, hypermedia developers need specific mechanisms to analyze and design using entities that belong to the hypermedia domain (such as nodes, links, anchors and space and time-based relationships). Moreover, hypermedia methods should provide mechanisms to deal with all the aforementioned features in a progressive and integrated way. In this paper, we present the Ariadne Development Method (ADM), a software engineering method that proposes a systematic, flexible, integrative and platform-independent process to specify and evaluate hypermedia and web applications. ADM has been shown particularly useful in complex systems involving a huge number of users with different abilities to access information, with a complex structure where a huge number of nodes have to be organized in a clear way to produce specifications that are discussed by people with an heterogeneous background. This is the case of ARCE, a Latin American project where 21 countries are cooperating to produce a web platform to improve assistance in disaster mitigation situations.     

Framework and authoring tool for an extension of the UIML language

This paper presents a framework for the design of User Interfaces (UIs). By applying model transformations, the framework allows different UIs to be generated for different computing platforms. The tool presented in this work helps designers to build an abstract user interface which is later transformed into a concrete user interface by means of transformation techniques based on graph grammars. These techniques can be used to generate implementation code for several UI platforms including desktop applications, dynamic websites and mobile applications. The generated user interfaces are integrated with a multi-tier application by referencing external services and communicating with the application core over Web Service protocols. Our tool also allows the concrete interfaces to be enhanced before generating the final UI. The approach uses an adaptation of UIML (User Interface Markup Language). The adaptation focuses on defining a data model and a services model, and it also introduces a navigation model that allows data communication from one UI to another. The obtained UIs together with Web Services can conform complete applications instead of just being prototypes.     

Students’ navigation patterns in the interaction with a mechanics hypermedia program

This study investigates the interaction of a group of freshmen enrolled in a Pre Service Physics Teacher Training Course with a mechanics hypermedia program. Data were obtained to discuss hypertextual navigation guided by the following questions: (i) How can the students’ navigation in this hypermedia program be characterized? (ii) How does this relate to their prior knowledge in mechanics? The sequence analysis of the events collected from the log files was used to characterize students’ navigation and a mechanics test assessed students’ prior knowledge. The inspection of students’ navigation graphs made it possible to associate the structure of navigation to prior knowledge in mechanics. Three patterns of navigation are proposed associated to different levels of students’ prior knowledge and to different roles performed by the program. In the organized navigation, the student who best performed in the pre test seemed to be reviewing content he already knew, using the system as a database. In the conceptual navigation the students who presented difficulties in the pre test spent different times in the pages as they were addressing conceptual difficulties, using the system as a support for learning. The students who scored the lowest in the test performed a disoriented navigation, spending much less than the adequate time to interact meaningfully with the content. The role that previous knowledge in mechanics plays in these patterns of navigation was related to the function that Ausubel’s subsumers perform in learning. The results indicate that hypertextual navigation can provide information about students’ conditions to engage in meaningful learning, which could be used to help the teacher personalize instruction.     

Mind the gap: Impact on learnability of user interface design of authoring tools for teachers

Few teachers include information and communication technology in the classroom, despite their potential for increasing attention and motivation for students. Educational authoring tools are intended to turn teachers into designers and deliverers of technology-enhanced educational content, and increasing the adoption of these tools is a key element for speeding up this transformation. This paper emphasizes the importance of learnability for preventing rejection or abandonment by of such an authoring tool, and how acceptance is deeply affected by the interaction paradigm and the creation metaphor used in the tool. We present an analysis comparing two design paradigms: the widespread menu-based and choice-guided interaction paradigm versus a consistent metaphor with direct manipulation. The latter was implemented in DEDOS-Editor, a novel authoring tool that allows the creation of diverse educational activities that can be performed on different devices, such as PCs, digital blackboards, tablets, and multitouch surfaces. An experimental study shows the tremendous impact that interface choices have on the tool's learning curve. The results provide the first mapping of the choice of a direct-manipulation interface and its effect on the learning curve's entry point, as well as a consistent interaction metaphor with smoother and fast-growing learning curves. This allows users to complete more tasks and gain more knowledge through experience, in contrast to menu-based interfaces. The initial use of the tool is thus made easier for users with no experience or information about the tool, and the advantages of experience and expertize in facing new challenges are facilitating. This work also highlights the appropriateness of learning curves as a tool for measuring learnability.     

Processing: programming for the media arts

Processing is a programming language and environment built for the media arts communities. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within the media arts context and to serve as a software sketchbook. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, and researchers for learning, prototyping, and production. This essay discusses the ideas underlying the software and presents its relationship to open source software and the idea of software literacy. Additionally, Processing is discussed in relation to education and online communities.     

Assessment and multimedia authoring – a tool for externalising understanding

Abstract Multimedia authoring software has a number of features that, given teacher support, should provide conditions that help pupils create material that genuinely reflects their understanding. This paper reviews the ways in which use of this technology may also support improvements in assessment. Drawing on research findings it describes how pupil-produced multimedia documents can reveal aspects of performance that traditional tests may not recognise. If such assessment is to be accepted at the policy level, a shared set of criteria for achievement must be developed in terms of technical manipulation and content exposition. Lines of enquiry for further investigation of multimedia authoring, pupil learning and assessment are proposed.     

Javigator:Java代码导读及分析管理工具的设计

为克服阅读理解源代码的困难,根据现有的软件开发辅助工具的特点,对源代码导读和管理工具进行了深入的分析和研究.针对业界大量使用的Java语言,设计并实现了一个旨在以Java源代码导读为主、并具代码抽取等分析管理功能的交互式软件开发辅助工具Javigator.作为Eclipse的插件,能帮助开发人员快速地阅读理解Java源程序,并支撑对关注代码的快速测试及代码重用.Javigator使用灵活方便,可明显降低开发中理解及管理源代码的难度,提高开发的效率.     

SKY：一个面向方案设计的超媒体智能开发环境

为了有效地支持方案设计，一个智能开发工具应具有哪些特征呢？作者认为将设计过程支持与设计信息管理集成在同一环境下可创造一个人机一体化的方案设计环境，本文介绍了一个作者开放的用于支持方案设计的智能设计开发环境ＳＫＹ《ＳＫＹ同时具有智能开发工具和超媒体系统的特点。文中给出了ＳＫＹ的总体结构，并且对ＳＫＹ的关键技术；面向对象知识表示，支持设计过程、问题求解策略和超媒体设计信息管理作出详细的讨论。最后介绍了     

A web-based cooperative tool for risk management with adaptive security

Risk management can benefit from Web-based tools fostering actions for treating risks in an environment, while having several individuals collaborating to face the endeavors related to risks. During the intervention, the security rules in place to preserve resources from unauthorized access, might need to be modified on the fly, e.g., increasing the privileges of risk managers or letting rescue teams view the exact position of the victims. Modifications should respect the overall security policies and avoid security conflicts. This paper presents a dynamic access control model for environmental risks involving physical resources. Data structures included in our Web application to represent both risk and security are given. To keep the dynamic security rules compliant with overall organization security objectives, we consider rules grouped in Access Control Domains so that changes do not create security conflicts during collaboration in risk management. Considering work environments as an example, risk and access control models are introduced. Security is built on the ABAC (Attribute Based Access Control) paradigm. A Risk Management System (RMS) is illustrated: it captures events, signals potential risks, and outputs strategies to prevent the risk. Dynamic authorization is included in the RMS to vary subjects’ privileges on physical resources based on risk level, people position and so on. These concepts are implemented in a prototype Web application appearing as a Web Dashboard for risk management.     

Long-term experiments with an adaptive spherical view representation for navigation in changing environments

Real-world environments such as houses and offices change over time, meaning that a mobile robot’s map will become out of date. In this work, we introduce a method to update the reference views in a hybrid metric-topological map so that a mobile robot can continue to localize itself in a changing environment. The updating mechanism, based on the multi-store model of human memory, incorporates a spherical metric representation of the observed visual features for each node in the map, which enables the robot to estimate its heading and navigate using multi-view geometry, as well as representing the local 3D geometry of the environment. A series of experiments demonstrate the persistence performance of the proposed system in real changing environments, including analysis of the long-term stability.     

Experience with a portable debugging tool

Debugging tools are usually highly machine and compiler dependent programs that are either impossible to move or require a tremendous effort to move to another machine. This paper describes Ctrace, a portable debugging tool for the C language that provides the same, easy-to-use debugging environment on all machines. A similar debugger can be written for any language. Ctrace is a preprocessor that inserts source language debugging code into the program before compilation that, at execution time, prints the text of each source language statement along with the values of variables it uses and modifies. Redundant trace output from program loops is detected and eliminated. Tracing can be limited to selected statements or functions. Ctrace has shown its usefulness and popularity by its installation on over 200, computers at Bell Laboratories. It has proven its portability by being used to test software on four different operating systems and nine different processors.     

JDiff: A differencing technique and tool for object-oriented programs

During software evolution, information about changes between different versions of a program is useful for a number of software engineering tasks. For example, configuration-management systems can use change information to assess possible conflicts among updates from different users. For another example, in regression testing, knowledge about which parts of a program are unchanged can help in identifying test cases that need not be rerun. For many of these tasks, a purely syntactic differencing may not provide enough information for the task to be performed effectively. This problem is especially relevant in the case of object-oriented software, for which a syntactic change can have subtle and unforeseen effects. In this paper, we present a technique for comparing object-oriented programs that identifies both differences and correspondences between two versions of a program. The technique is based on a representation that handles object-oriented features and, thus, can capture the behavior of object-oriented programs. We also present JDiff, a tool that implements the technique for Java programs. Finally, we present the results of four empirical studies, performed on many versions of two medium-sized subjects, that show the efficiency and effectiveness of the technique when used on real programs.