[OOPS - I included the wrong message above, duplicate of Differentiators
instead of the Comparison message - here is the CORRECT one]
Here's another contribution from John Rothermel from 1994. John
conducted a 6-month IR&D project at then ESL titled "OHS Technology
Evaluation Project" with the Bootstrap Institute. This summarizes the
categories he delineated for comapring other systems to the OHS model.
Date: Mon, 30 May 94 17:53:58
From: John G. Rothermel <jgr>
All,
In doing comparisons of functionality among different hypermedia
systems, these are the categories I came up with. Other capability
lists (like Jeff Conklin's) are a lot shorter, but seem to be at such a
high level that a lot of important differentiators get left out (e.g.
many of the systems that look basically the same at Jeff's level, don't
satisfy my draft-passing litmus test).
Anyway these are the categories and subcategories:
Information Organization
Filing - the ability to store and retrieve documents (or parts of
documents) in named containers (folders / directories / Locator files
w/ links)
Items Filed Multiple Places w/out Copying - An item can be filed
wherever it makes sense. But each filing just points to the
single system-wide copy. (This is important because if users do
ubiquitous copying, the linked discussion and other info
management context of the original is cut off and lost at that
point as discussion clusters around the copy - e.g. you can get
two islands of discussion growing around two copies - and the
twain should meet but won't.)
Folders Filed Within Folders - the filing capability should
recursively scale up.
Linking - the ability to create and follow links between (parts of)
two documents
Fine-Grained Location (Src/Dst) - i.e. supports a link from an
exact spot in a document, to an exact spot in the target document.
(E.g. v.s. whole file to whole file.)
Fine-Grained Extent (Src/Dst) - the area of contiguous "text" that
the link is referring to (from). Should be explicitly delineated
for the user (reader). Should include sub-object,
multiple-object, and partial-through-partial object extents (vs.
whole-object-only).
Semantic Direction - supports the notion of from-to so that the
user can sort out semantically-typed links (supports, precedes,
caused), i.e. which end of the link supported, preceded, or caused
the other. This is in contrast to...
Can Follow From Either End - Links should be followable from
either end (e.g. backlink support). AKA "bifollowable links"
(Nelson)
Storage - e.g. links are embedded in the document itself, in a
separate associated file, in a DB, or what. [This is in some
sense a lower-level design (or implementation) question, but has
repercussions for higher level functionality - like distributed vs
local / disconnected-portability, access control, whatever.
[Common academic wisdom is that the link info should be in a
separate DB - and the documents should remain untainted when not
in use with a tool that supports linking (Intermedia); but other
practical experience says this is unnecessary overkill/overhead.]
Tagging - the ability to associate metainformation (keywords,
attribute-value pairs, creator/modifier id/timestamp) with
information items (documents (or parts of documents), filing folders,
links, or any other information organization construct like "pile" or
"information set"), in support of (a) retrieval and (b) display
filtering of the items.
Documents
Folders
Links
Multivalued Tags - I.e. supports "property lists" like:
(attribute, value1, value2, ..., valueN).
Metainformation - things like indices or catalogs of collections of
documents (or any other information construct). Stuff that tools can
hook into in support of finding, displaying, and generally managing
information. (Tags are an example of metainformation, but this
category is trying to get at larger collections of metainformation,
grouped together in order to support finding and organization (so I
guess a folder would be a primitive example at this level).
Document Management
Document Architecture - one continuous hunk of text; v.s. allows
segments of various media (static embedding e.g. via copy/paste);
v.s. data segmented by the type of data handled by the originating
tool (where the tool can still work on that segment of the document
in place (e.g. OLE) (AKA "live embedding")
Annotations - per-user commentary associated with a sequence of text
in a document.
Highlights - per-user background coloring/markup over a sequence of
text (like link extents without the link). (Along with per-highlight
metainformation (name, etc.) provides "bookmarks" with extent.)
Linear Versioning - standard "supercedes" style like DEC file systems
support (Tops, VAX). Latest is best.
Parallel Versioning - multiple versions of the same basic information
co-exist with slightly different packaging. None is any better than
the others, they're just different takes on the same thing (e.g.
executive version, implementors' version, instructors' version,
beginners' version).
Access Control - control at what levels...
Group Granularity - owner, group(s), world, system, access
Information Granularity - whole document, chunk within (object,
extent, whatever), etc.
Change-Detection / Notification - This gives a *per-user* indication of
what information items have changed out there in the infoverse since
last seen by that user. "Passive notifications" are flags that the user
sees while browsing the info organization (e.g. asterisk by modified
document or folder name, or different color/font) "Active
notifications" are requested by the user for specific documents or
subsets of the filing/linking structure, and user gets pinged by the
system if and when a subsequent change occurs (file updated, folder
contents changed, etc.)
File Modified (specific chunk?)
Folder Modified
Link Web Modified
DB Updated
Information Visualization
Filtering - can specify exactly what to present to the screen, or
exactly what to leave out, based on metainfo attached to the item
(tag, author, date, etc.)
Info Organization Structure Display - navigation maps, graphical
displays of filing or linking structure, etc.
Graphs / Plots of Tagged Info - e.g. throw all files/chunks in this
folder onto a timeline plot based on their "Date" tag. Or, ditto
onto an x/y plot with tag "Cost" on the x axis, and tag "Performance"
on the y axis (where each item has tags like (Cost, $ 2000) and
(Performance, 300 MHz)).
Collaboration
Concurrent Editing
Bulletin Boards
Screen Sharing
Role Support
Electronic Signatures
Extensibility
User Written Scripts
In-house Programming - i.e. source code available, or API available
Data Interoperability
Within Environment - e.g. copy/paste, v.s. data from various tools
can be collocated (e.g. in multimedia documents), v.s. data generated
by one tool can be operated on by another
With External Environment - import/export, active translation on the
fly, Augment Reach, API support
Ok, that's all I've got. I sure don't see this as an end-point - just
something on which to start hanging dialog. Next on my agenda would be
a comparison of Augment, VNS, and Lotus Notes using these categories.
Also, despite one box dedicated to "Interoperability Within
Environment", this comparison list doesn't really capture the
interoperability (typically *non*interoperability) of the capabilities
themselves - which is what really makes an environment fly (second-order
effects). It'd be interesting to plot some kind of interoperability
matrix among the various capabilities for each system to be compared; I
bet most would be sparse.
(As a designer, you'd like all capabilities to be orthogonal and play
naturally with each other w/out special cases or dependencies. And in
some sense, you want a minimal set of constructs (nouns as well as
verbs) that are general, and can be applied in a wide variety of
situations. This yields high conceptual integrity.
E.g. Augment's locator files (files of (commented) links) are a great
example of subsuming the concept of filing folders / directories.
Locators are more powerful because (a) they're just another document to
which all the powerful document organization/manipulation capabilities
apply (like editing(!) and structuring), (b) they can point to more
fine-grained pieces of information than whole documents, and (c) can
contain commentary or other metainformation about the item pointed to.
(But it needs to be easier in Augment to do traditional folder
management operations like displaying the list of contents in various
orders, managing file deletions and renames, etc.))
Well, I'm dried up for today. 'Nuff for now.
Cheerios,
John
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