A Writing Support Tool with Multiple Views

This paper describes both SuperText,a computer program designed to support productiveexpository writing processes among students at adistance teaching university, and its theoreticaljustification. Being able to write well is animportant communication skill, and the writingprocess can help to build and clarify the writersknowledge. Computers can support this by providing amedium to externalise and record the writersunderstanding. Representations appropriate to thisexternalisation are uninstantiated idea labels,instantiated text units, and a variety ofrelationships between these items. SuperText usesthese representations to support a range of writingstyles. It provides several independent Views thatrepresent the structure of the evolving documentthrough expanding hierarchies, each with a varietyof Presentations. Allied to these Views is a textwork space providing access to a database ofcontinuous text nodes. Taken together, these providean ability to represent global and intermediatestructures of the document well beyond that ofconventional editors. These aspects were all ratedhighly by students participating in a series offield trials of SuperText.