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ED 296 735 IR 052 399

AUTHOR Yankelovich, NicoleTITLE Intermedia: A System for Linking Multimrdia

Documents. IRIS Technical Report 86-2.INSTITUTION Brown Univ., Providence, RI. Inst. for Research in

Information and Scholarship.PUB DATE 86NOTE 19p.PUB TYPE Reports - Descriptive (141)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.D'1CRIPTORS Bibliographic Coupling; *Computer Assisted

Instruction; Computer Graphics; *Computer SystemDesign; Higher Education; *Information Retrieval;*Man Machine Systems; *Multimedia Instruction; WordProcessing

IDENTIFIERS *Hypermedia

ABSTRACT"Intermedia" is a hypermedia system which was

developed for use in university research and teaching. It provides aframework for object-oriented, direct manipulation editors andapplications, and the capability to link together materials createdwith those applications. Instructors are able to constructexploratory environments for their students as well as useapplications for their day-to-day work, research, and writing. Thispaper provides a discussion of hypermedia systems in general, as wellas a description of the Intermedia system which focuses on severalimportant user features, and illustrates the operation of the systemthrw,h a sample session. The text is supplemented by 15 figures. (19references) (Author/EW)

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Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be madefrom the original document.

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0oiOLid

INTERMEDIA: A System forLinking Multimedia Documents

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONOffice of Educational Research and Improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)

to This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or Organizationoriginating it

O Minor changes have been made to improvereproduction Quality

- Points of view or opinions stated in this dot u.ment do not necessarily represent officialOERI position or policy

Nicole Yankelovich

"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THISMATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

Nicole Yankelovich

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC):'

Abstract

Intermedia is a hypermedia system developedfor use in university research and teaching. Itprovides a framework for object-oriented,direct manipulation editors and applications,and the capability to link together materialscreated with those applications. Instructors areable to construct exploratory environments- fortheir students as well as use applications fortheir day-to-day work, research and writing.This paper presents a general discussion ofhypermedia followed by a description of theIntermedia system, focusing on severalimportant user interface features andillustrating the operation of the systemthrough a sample session.

1. Introduction

At Brown University, we have both formallyand informally examined the way faculty,especially in the humanities, teach withcurrently available tools and technology. Weobserved that university instructors do not"tutor" students nearly as much as they try toguide them through bodies of material, helpthem to analyze and synthesize that material,and encourage them to make connections anddiscover meaningful relationships.

We have kept these methods in mind,therefore, while formulating the requirementsfor software systems appropriate for thescholarly community. We have focused ourefforts on building tools for synthesizing,arranging, indexing, connecting, sharing,

Intermedia

customizing, visualizing, integrating andretrieving information.

This paper describes Intermedia, one suchtool designed for use in the universityenvironment. The system, developed atBrown University's Institute for Research inInformation and Scholarship (IRIS), containsmultiple applications and providesmechanisms for linking together the contentsof documents created with those applications.The bulk of this paper describes the linking, orhypermedia, functionality provided byIntermedia and the user interface techniquesdesigned to support that functionality.

Hypertext and Hypermedia

In the early 1960's, Theodor Nelson coined theword hypertext to describe the idea of non-sequential writing. A hypertext system is onewhich allows authors or groups of authors tolink information together, create pathsthrough a corpus of related material, annotateexisting texts, and create notes that pointreaders to either bibliographic data or the bodyof the referenced text. With a computer-basedhypertext system, students and researchers arenot obliged to search through library stacks tolook up referenced books and articles; they canquickly follow trails of footnotes withoutlosing their original context. Explicitconnections links allow readers to travelfrom one document to another, automatingwhat one does when following references inan encyclopedia. In addition, hypertext systemsthat support multiple users allow researchers,professors and students to communicate andcollaborate with one another within thecontext of a body o: scholarly material. For asurvey of early hypertext systems refer to[Yank85).

Hypermedia is simply an extension ofhypertext that incorporates other media inaddition to text. With a hypermedia system,authors can create a linked corpus of materialthat includes text, static graphics, animatedgraphics, video, sound, music, and so forth.Examples and descriptions of existinghypermedia systems can be found in [Back82,

IRIS Technical Report 86-2

Bend84, Fein82, Hala85 and Weye85].

2. The Intermedia System

Architecture

Intermedia is both an author's tool and areader's tool. The system, in fact, makes nodistinction between types of users providingthey have appropriate access rights to thematerial they wish to edit, explore or annotate.Creating new materials, making links andfollowing links are all integrated into a singlemodeless environment.

The Intermedia system is built on top of the4.2 BSD -UNIX operating system and runs onIBM RT/PC and Sun workstations whichsupport Sun's Network File System (NFS). Tocreate Intermedia, the software development:eam adopted an object-oriented preprocessorto the C programming language licensed toBrown University by Bolt, Beranek andNewman as well as Apple's MacApp facilityfor creating generic Macintosh applicationsITes1851 and Cadmus's Cad Mac toolbox, bothunder special agreement with AppleComputer, Inc. With an object-orienteddevelopment environment and a UNIX-basedimplementation of the Macintosh Toolbox,the Intermedia programmers constructed asystem that starts with an applicationframework similar to the Apple Lisa [App183]or the XEROX Star [Xero82] environmentsand adds to that framework full hypermediacapabilities. For a more detailed description ofthe underlying Intermedia architecture, referto fMeyr86].

The Applications

Five applications currently exist within theIntermedia framework: a text editor(Inter Text), a graphics editor (InterDraw), ascanned image viewer (InterPix), a three-dimensional object viewer (InterSpect), and atimeline editor ( InterVal). Any number ofdocuments of different types may be open onthe desktop at one time along with the folderscontaining the documents. These applicationsconform as closely as possible to the Macintosh

Intermedia

interface standards detailed in [App185]. Bothprogrammer-level tools and well-defined userinterface concepts contribute to the highdegree of consistency exhibited across allIntermedia applications.

The Inter Text word processing application issimilar to Apple's MacWrite [Appl84a] withthe addition of style sheets for formatting textrather than MacWrite-style rulers. Using stylesheets, the user can define a set of styles for aparticular document (e.g., paragraph, title,subtitle, indented quote, numbered point) andapply those styles to any unit of text betweentwo carriage returns, called an, entity. Whenthe user edits the definition of a style, all theentities to which that style is applied reformataccordingly.

With InterDraw, a structured graphics editorsimilar to Apple's Mac Draw [App18413], userscan created two-dimensional illustrations byselecting tools from a palette attached to eachInter Draw window.

InterPix is a utility program that displaysbitmap images entered into the system using adigitizing scanner. These images can becropped, copied and pasted into Inter Drawdocuments. The InterPix application is beingextended to provide full bitmap editingcapabilities.

Like InterPix, InterSpect is a viewer ratherthan an editor. It converts files containingthree-dimensional data points into three-dimensional representations of that data.Users can manipulate the three-dimensionalimage by rotating it, zooming in or out, orhiding parts of the model.

The fifth application, Inter Val, providesinteractive editing features for creatingchronological timelines. As the user enterspairs of dates and labels, the applicationformats them on a vertical timeline accordingto user-defined styles. Like a charting package,the display of the data is determined by acertain set of parameters which the user canmodify.

2 IRIS Technical Report 86-2

Hypermedia Functionality

The hypermedia functionality of theIntermedia system is integrated into eachapplication so that the actions of creating andtraversing links may be interspersed with theactions of creating and editing documents.

The act of making links between Intermediadocuments has been modeled as closely aspossible on the Smalltalk/Macintoshcopy /paste paradigm [App185, Gold84] in aneffort to fit the link-making process into aconceptual model already familiar to users. Iflinks are to be made with frequenCy, they mustbe a seamless part of the user interface. Thesmooth integration of this new function intoan already ingrained user interface model isapparent in the sample session following thissection.

Unlike some other hypertext or hypermediasystems that only allow links to be made toentire documents [Know86 and Shne86],Intermedia allows users to create links from aspecific location in one document to a specificlocation in another document. These "anchorpoints" in the documents are called blocks. Indesigning the Intermedia linkingfunctionality, one of the development team'sdesign goals was to allow anything that couldbe selected to be made into an anchor for alink. The size of a block, therefore, may rangefrom an entire document to an insertionpoint, depending on the selection region auser identifies as the block's extent. Forexample, in an Inter Text document, a blockmight consist of an insertion point, a singlecharacter, a word, a sentence, two paragraphs,and so forth. Small marker icons are placednear the source and destination blocks toindicate the existence of a link.

To help manage a large corpus of linkeddocuments, links and blocks are assigned a setof descriptive properties. Some of these, likeuser I.D. and creation time, are assignedautomatically while other properties are user-defined. Users access and edit link and blockproperty information through property sheetdia'ogs. These dialogs contain a field for the

user to enter a one line explainer, similar tothe subject field in some electronic mailprograms. From a reader's perspective, linkexplainers are particularly important. If asingle block has more than one linkemanating from it, users choose the path theywish to follow from a list of link explainerspresented in a dialog box.

Property sheets also contain fields for addingkeywords. Although still under development,these keywords, along with the defaultinformation assigned to links and blocks, willprovide users with a mechanism for searchingthe document corpus. The result of a keywordsearch will yield a list of explainers associatedwith all the blocks or links meeting the searchcriteria. Each item in the list will automaticallybe linked to its corresponding block, or, in thecase of links, to the corresponding source blockof each link. For example, a student would beable to search for all the links created by theprofessor after a certain date that contain thekeywords "Browning and DramaticMonologue."

Some users may want to enter both block andlink properties during the link creationprocess, while others may not want to take thetime to fill them in at all. By default, propertysheets are not automatically presented to theuser. Intermedia provides a ViewingSpecifications dialog as a utility for settinguser preferences. To change the defaultbehavior, users alter settings in the ViewingSpecificaitons dialog, turning link and/orblock creation to "verbose." If users havecreated links with the "fast" rather than the"verbose" settings, they can still edit block andlink properties after a link has been establishedby selecting a marker icon and choosing the"Link Properties" or "Block Properties"command from the menu.

Link and block properties help to managecomplexity within the Intermediaenvironment, but the notion of context iseven more crucial. In some systems, links areglobal; all links are available at all times to allusers. In such systems, links become anintegral part of the documents. In Intermedia,

Intermedia 3 IRIS Technical Report 86.2

block and link information is not storedwithin individual documents, but rather issuperimposed on them. Webs are providedto maintain the block and link information,allowing users to work within their owncontext undistracted by documents, blocks andlinks created by others sharing the samecomputing resources. In the future, webs willalso serve as the focus for filtering operations.Opening a web causes a particular set of blocksand,links to be imposed on a set of documentswhile that web is opened. Thus, webs allowdifferent users to impose their own- links onthe same document set. For example, anacademic department might purchase all- ofShakespeare's works in electronic format.Rather than duplicating every work eachfaculty member wants to link to, byintroducing webs, Intermedia allows users toall create links to the same documents,without having to see each other's links.Although only one context may be viewed at atime, users can easily switch contexts byclosing one web and opening another. Ofcourse, if users do want work together, anynumber may share a single web.

In addition to webs, Intermedia also has asystem of user access rights that help tomanage multiple users sharing large bodies ofconnected material. Due to the hypermediafunctionality of Intermedia, the access rightscheme is slightly more complex than in otherUNIX environments where users either haveread permission or write permission to filesand directories. Intermedia adds annotationpermission to the other two forms of accessrights. This allows students to add links to adocument which they are not allowed to edit.

3. Common User Interface Concepts

Several user interface concepts stressedthroughout Intermedia enable users to learnnew applications quickly and predict thebehavior of features they have never usedbefore. Like the copy and paste operations inMacintosh and Smalltalk programs, someoperations in the Intermedia system behaveidentically across all applications. The linkingfunctionality is a prime example. In any

Intermedia

document, users can specify a selection regionand choose the "Start Link" command fromthe menu, and in any other document,regardless of type, users can define anotherselection region and choose one of several"complete link" commands. Likewise, tofollow a link, a user exploring a web can selecta marker icon in any type of document, andchoose the "Follow" command from a menu.As a short cut, a user' can "double-click" on amarker icon to initiate the follow, just as he orshe might double-click on a icon in arfolder toopen a document. Since following a linkusually entails opening a document, weanticipated that users would expect to be ableto follow a link by double-clicking on themarker icon. In a system that encourages rapidtransitions between applications, it is essentialto limit the amount a browser must learn inorder to be a successful user of the system andto capitalize on those conventions he or shemay already be familiar with.

Other features in the system, while not exactlyidentical to one another, are conceptuallysimilar. Most applications, for instance, allowusers to control the format or the displaycharacteristics of data. The interface techniquesfor conceptually similar operations have beendesigned to capitalize on the likenesses. Onesuch example is the style paradigm [Inte86,Smit82]. Styles are sets of properties orcharacterists that govern the appearance ofdata within a document. Users can define ormodify a style by filling out or editing a "form"called a style sheet (sometimes refered to as aproperty sheet). Both the InterTextapplication and the InterVal applicationcontain style sheets which can be used tospecify different text formats such asparagraphs, indented quotes, lists, and titles, ordifferent timeline formats such as position ofdates relative to tick marks and position oflabels relative to dates. In the graphics editor,different styles may be applied to shapes suchas line width, pen style, or fill style. Althoughnot yet implemented, InterDraw will alsoallow users to "borrow" the style of one shapeand "apply" it to any others. This means thatthe combination of line width, pen style andfill style can be defined once and then applied

IRIS Technical Report 86-2

as a unit.to any existing objects or to any newobjects. The concept of styles will also beincluded in the InterSpect three-dimensionalviewer in the future. In this case, users will beable to define a set of viewing paranieters thatspecify a particular camera position. Just asstyles in the text editor uo not alter thecontent, but simply the presentation, of thetext, styles in InterSpect will be used to definethe manner in which the data is viewed. Bystoring all presentation parameters in stylesheets, it is possible to substitute styles withthe same name but different parameters for alltypes of data in the system.

Related to the use of styles, is the frequent useof palettes sets of controls attached to adocument window. Along, with style sheetdialogs, palettes provide a means for definingand applying styles. In Inter Text, for example,all the styles defined for a particular documentare stored in a style palette. Two mouse clicksare all that is necessary to either change thestyle of an existing text entity or to changefrom one style to another before beginning anew entity. With a large screen and the abilityto have 30 or 40 windows open at one time, itis essential that all the tools needed forcommon operations are close at hand ratherthan in the menus. When they are notneeded, however, all palettes can be hiddenfrom view to unclutter the screen and toimprove the manner in which material ispresented to a person browsing through thesystem.

Another example of a standard user interfaceconcept that permeates the system and is madepossible in a workstation environment withvirtual memory capabilities is the use of"infinite" undo and redo commands.Instead of only being able to retract the lastaction performed, the user is able to undo theeffects of all actions performed since the lasttime a document was saved. Any single actionor set of actions that the user has undone maythen be redone. There are no actions in anyIntermedia applications that modify thecontent of the document which cannot beundone. This fosters a sense of security inusers, permitting them to experiment freely

with their document with the knowledge thatthey can return it to its former state at anytime.

To aid programmers in building standardfeatures such as "undo" and "redo"consistently throughout all Intermediaapplications, the software development teamfirst extended Apple's object-orientedapplication framework, MacApp, and thenimplemented two general purpose,programmer-level building blocks within theextended framework. The building blocks, onefor text and one for graphics, allowprogrammers to reuse text and graphics objectseither "as is" or in slightly modified forms,cutting down on duplication of programmingeffort as well as enforcing consistent userinterface techniques. With only MacApp andthe building blocks, programmers would beable to implement applications that conformto the Macintosh user interface standards;however, the requirements for the Intermediasystem include a uniform method of linkingtogether the contents of documents createdwith any application within the system. Tomeet this requirment, the development teamextended MacApp to include a set of featuresnecessary for supporting linking functionality.In this way, applications not only inheritwindow, menu, mouse and other genericapplication functionality from MacApp, butalso inherit linking functionality from theMacApp extensions, and text and graphicediting functionality from the building blocks.

4. Sample Session

To illustrate the user interface features and thelinking functionality discussed above, thissection of the paper takes the reader on a tourof the system designed to simulate theinteraction that takes place during a hands-onIntermedia session. The figures should aid invisualizing the system, while the text sho. ddsupply the action.

Figure I

As you can see from Figure 1, the Intermediadesktop includes a window manager, a

Intermedia 5 IRIS Technical Report 86-2

6

graphical folder system, a menu bar, and amouse interface. The contents of the foldersreflect the underlying hierarchical UNIXdirectory structure. Unlike the Macintosh,Intermedia does not store application icons inthe same folders with documents; instead,they are stored with several other special-purpose tools in an application, or New,window which you can see in the upper rightcorner of the screen. The reason for this istwofold. First, users do not have to searchthrough folders to find the applications. Evenif the New window is hidden from view byoverlapping windows, selecting the "New"command from the File menu reveals it.Secondly, in a networked environment, it iseasier to have a single set of applications in anagreed-upon place that can be maintained andupd it by a system adminstrator.

The contents of the active folder in Figure 1

represent a number of documents of differenttypes (two Inter Pix, four Inter Val, tenInter Draw, and seventeen Inter Textdocuments) that are samples from a largercorpus of material called Context 32: A Webof English Literature [Land86], created for thecourse "English 32: A Survey of EnglishLiterature from 1700 - Present." Any of thesedocument icons can be selected, opened andedited. In order to follow or create links,however, we must first define a context byopening an existing web or by creating a newone. If a web is not open, we can still open andedit the documents; however, no link andblock information will be visible. Rather thanbeginning a new web, we select the icon titled"Browning Web" and choose the "Open"command from the File menu.

Figure 2

A global map, or visual representation of thelink structure, opens on the screen. Globalmaps are analogous to road maps of the entirecountry. They depict every document in acorpus; one line between two document iconsindicates that at least one link exists betweenthe documents. In a large corpus, users canonly see a small portion of the map at any onetime. The global map provides a broad

Intermedia

overview; just as a traveler can see at a glancewhich cities are the biggest hubs by thenumber of roads emanating from them, anIntermedia user can see which documents arecentral to the corpus by observing the numberof links connected to and from them.

An examination of the global map open inFigure 2 reveals that the Inter Draw document"Browning's Literary Relations" contains themost number of connections and wouldtherefore be the most appropriate startingpoint for .our exploration. Once a user selectsan entry point into the corpus, the equivalentof a detailed street map is necessary. Localmaps, not shown in this scenario, serve thispurpose by tracking the user's progressthrough the corpus and displaying only thecurrently active document and the links thatemanate from it. When the user activates adifferent document, either by following a linkor by opening one from a folder, the local mapupdates to display the new current documentand its direct predecessor and successor links.

Figure 3

After double-clicking on the "Browning'sLiterary Relations" icon to open it, anInter Draw document containing a diagramwith an image of Robert Browning opens.Notice that the three boxes in the top row ofthe diagram contain marker icons, arrowsenclosed in boxes. These markers indicate theexistence of links. To follow one of the linksshown, we first select the marker above thetext "Biography" by clicking once on it.

Figure 4

After selecting a marker icon, we pull downthe Intermedia menu and select the "Follow"command.

Figure 5

We immediately learn from the appearance ofa dialog box that the marker we selected hastwo links emanating from it, one which leadsto a biography of Browning and the otherwhich leads to a timeline. We select the

6 IRIS Technical Report 86-2

second link explainer in the dialog box andclick on the "OK" button to confirm ourselection.

Figure 6

The traversal of the link is now complete andthe timeline document, which we see containsall the important events in Browning's life,appears. The author of Browning's timelinechose to leave the events clustered in 50 yearintervals so that a majority of the events couldbe viewed in the window. This,means that allthe events between 1810 and 1859 are clusteredunder the tickmark by 1810, all the eventsbetween 1860 and 1919 are clustered under thetickmark by 1860, and so forth.

Notice that when a link is traversed,Intermedia automatically highlights theextent of the block at the other end of thelink, indicating a particular scope ofinformation to the reader. In this case ourattention is drawn to the first event in thetimeline.

We can now opt to recluster the timeline, butinstead, we notice another marker icon abovethe second event on the timeline and decide tofollow the link. We do so by double-clickingon the marker.

Figure 7

Another InterDraw document opens. Noticethat no dialog box appeared this time. Whenwe select a marker icon that only has one linkemanating from it, the document at the otherend of the link opens immediately since thereare no other alternate paths to follow.

Like the portrait of Browning in Figure 2, theillustration in Figure 7 was entered into thesystem using a scanner. The bitmap was thendisplayed by the InterPix application, croppedand pasted into this InterDraw document.After looking at the picture, we decide to closeit by clicking in the close box located in thewindow's upper left corner. Next we close theInterVal timeline.

Figures 8 and 9

Now we are back to the original Browningdiagram. After our brief exploration, we decideto fill in the-diagram by creating a new link.The first step in creating a link involvesdefining a block to serve as the anchor for thelink. We select the text "Connection to OtherArts" as the source block of the link andchoose "Start Link" from the Intermediamenu. While a link is pending, we mayperform any number of other actionsunrelated to link-making. Like the "Copy"operation common to all Macintosh-likeapplications, the "Start Link" operation iscompletely modeless.

Figure 10

Before completing the pending link, we returnto the folder (not pictured) and open anInterText document called "Browning Arts."Once the text is displayed, we select the title ofthe document as the destination block of thelink as shown in Figure 10. To complete thelink we choose "Complete Relation" from theIntermedia menu. You will notice twodifferent complete commands in the menu.These are similar in function, but each createsa different type of link. The "CompleteRelation" command which we chose, indicatesa primary path, whereas the "CompleteReference" command signifies that theinformation contained in the source block is ofmore importance than the informationcontained in the destination block.

Figure 11

After we issue the complete command, a linkproperty dialog appears, allowing us to fill indescriptive information about the link. Wereplace the default text, "Link 35," with themore meaningful explainer shown in Figure11. Before this particular session, we changedthe default setting for link creation in theViewing Specifications dialog so that a linkproperty dialog would automatically beopened each time we create a link.


Figure 12 destination block, since the source block isalready marked.

Once a link is established, both ends areindicated with markers. These markers areenclosed in boxes in some applications forbetter visibility, but the markers themselvesare identical in all applications. Before makinganother link, we add a quotation to the"Browning Arts" document. After typing inthe text of the quotation, we select the text,display the style palette, choose the "IndentedQuote" style from the palette and click on the"Apply" button, also located in the palette.With a simple text selection followed. by apalette selection and a button press, we haveeasily reformated the text without resorting tothe more complex series of steps necessary inother word processing programs.

Figure 13

Now we decide to make another link to a newInter Draw document which will contain apainting in the same stylistic genre asBrowning's poetry. The destination block ofthe previous link is appropriate for the sourceblock of our new link, so we select the existingmarker by clicking on it and then we choose"Start Link" from the menu (not pictured).Now, to create a new document, we activatethe "New" window and double-click on theInter Draw icon.

Figure 14

After the new document opens, we draw apicture frame in which we will paste a scannedimage at some later time. For the drawing, weuse tools from both the tool and style palettesattached to the window. After the drawing iscomplete, we may hide one or both of thepalettes. When a document is saved, the sizeof the window and the state of the palettes ispreserved along with all editing changes.

Remember that a link is still pending. In theabsence of an appropriate painting, we selectthe empty frame as the destination block of thepending link and choose "CompleteReference" from the Intermedia menu. Thistime, a new marker will only be added to the

Figure 15

Before we end our session, we activate theglobal map window and choose "Save" fromthe File menu. This automatically saves thenew links we have created as well as any newdocuments or editing changes made to existingdocuments.

4. Conclusion

To assess the power and utility of hypermedia,IRIS is conducting a series of experiments atBrown that introduce the Intermedia systeminto existing courses. As in the Englishliterature course, students in a plant cellbiology course are using Intermedia's editors,utilities, and linking functionality to writeterm papers and to explore a corpus ofmaterial about the cell and its processes. Priorto the beginning of the semester, the professorwrote, collected, organized and linked togetherprimary source material for the corpus,including current research papers, digitizedelectronmicrographs, diagrams, lecture notes,and three-dimensional models of cells. Inwriting their papers, students use the sameediting tools used by the professor and alsoinclude links to relevant primary sourcematerial in the corpus. The professorannotates student papers at various stages inthe writing process, beginning with theiroutlines. These annotations consist of notesabout the content of the paper and links tomaterial that the professor feels the studentshould read, .examine or explore beforecommitting to a particular assertion orargument. Finally, after the papers are"submitted" for a grade, the students in thecourse are asked to read and comment on eachothers' papers. Like the professor's comments,the students' annotations include reactionsand criticisms, or point to other student papersor to primary source material. Since thecomments become part of the corpus, eachstudent has the opportunity to read any or allof the comments left by others and commenton the comments, thus engaging in an


electronic dialogue. At the end of the course,the professor evaluates the quality of eachstudent's research paper as well as the qualityof his or hEr comments.

In the cell biology experiment, the Intermediasystem is being used throughout the authoringprocess, providing facilities to create, organize,reorganize and cross-reference free-form textand graphics. The experiment also illustrateshow a group of author:, and editors can use ahypertext or hypermedia system to workcollaboratively, using the tools tocommunicate as well as create.

In the Intermedia system, hypermediafunctionality is incorporated into an integratedwork environment with consistent, modeless,direct-manipulation applications. Strictadherence to pre-defined user interfaceparadigms throughout the system eases thedifficulty of learning a set of differentapplications. The ability for users to applywhat they have already learned from usingone application is particularly important in anenvironment such as Intermedia thatencourages frequent transitions fromapplication to application.

Acknowledgements

Intermedia is the culmination of a year ofintense ehort by a large team of developers ledby Norman Meyrowitz. I would like to thankHelen De Andrade, Steve Drucker, PageElmore, Charlie Evett, Matt Evett, EdGrossman, Nan Garrett, Karen Smith, BernardHaan, Tom Stambaugh, and Ken Utting fortheir tireless contributions to the Intermediasystem. I would also like to thank GeorgeLandow, David Cody, Glenn Everett, RobSullivan and Suzanne Keen Morley forproducing the enormous corpus, Context 32A Web of English Literature.

The work described in this paper wassponsored in part by a grant from theAnnenberg/CPB Project and a joint studycontract with IBM.

Intermedia

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Most of Browning's knowledge of Renaissance art came from hisreading of the Biographic Universe& and Giorgio Vasari's Lives of thePainters, The latter work was his source for such poems as "Fra Lippo Lippi"and "Andrea del Sarto." He also frequented art galleries during the years heand Elizabeth lived In Italy: their house in Florence, Casa Guidi, is just downthe street from the NW Palace.

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Browning wrote almost as many poems about musicians as aboutpainters, including "A Toccata of Galupprs,""Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,"and "Abt Vogler." In this case, the interest came from his mother, who was anaccomplished pianist.

Browning could play a little, having probably taken lessons in his earlyteens. But he Is more famous for his poems about painters. According to'Dante Gabriel Rossetti (the painter, poet, and founder of the Pre-Raphae'efemovement), Browning's 'oovAedge of painting and painters was "beyond that ofany one i ever metencyclopaedically beyond that of Ruskin himself." 'JohnRuskin, remember, was the author of 'Modem Painters, The Stones of Venice,and The Seven Lamps of Architecture. He himself said of "The BishopOrders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church,"-it is nearly all that I said of thecentral Renaissance in thirty pages of The Stones of Venice put Into as manylines.,. ."

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Browning could play a little, having probably taken lessons in his earlyteens. But he is more famous for his poems about painters. According to'Dante Gabriel Rossetti (the painter, poet, and founder of -the Pre-Raphaelitemovement), Browning's knowledge of painting and painters was "beyond that ofany one i ever metencyclopaedically beyond that of Ruskin himself." JohnRuskin, remember, was the author of Modem Painters, The Stones of Venice,and The Seven Lamps of Architecture. He himself said of -"The BishopOrders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church,""it is nearly all that I said of thecentral Renaissance in thirty pages of The Stones of Venice put into as manylines...:'

Most of Browning's knowledge of Renaissance art came from hisreading of the Biographie Universe/le and Giorgio Vasturs Lives of thePainters. The latter work was his source for such poems as -"Fre Lippo Lippi"and -"Andrea del Saito" He also frequented art galleries during the years heand Elizabeth lived in Italy: their house in Florence, Casa Guldl, Is just downthe street from the Pitti Palace.

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