Back to the Future: Bringing Original Hypermedia and Cross-Media Concepts to Modern Desktop Environments

Blue Sky paper presentation given at Hypertext 2021, Virtual Event.

Over the last few decades, we have seen massive improvements in computing power, but nevertheless we still rely on digital documents and file systems that were originally created by mimicking the characteristics of physical storage media with all its limitations. This is quite surprising given that even before the existence of the computer, Information Science visionaries such as Vannevar Bush described more powerful information management solutions. We therefore aim to improve the way information is managed in modern desktop environments by embedding a hypermedia engine offering rich hypermedia and cross-media concepts at the level of an operating system. We discuss the resource-selector-link (RSL) hypermedia metamodel as a candidate for realising such a general hypermedia engine and highlight its flexibility based on a number of domain-specific applications that have been developed over the last two decades. The underlying content repository will no longer rely on monolithic files, but rather contain a user's data in the form of content fragments, such as snippets of text or images, which are structurally linked to form the corresponding documents, and can be reused in other documents or even shared across computers. By increasing the scope to a system-wide hypermedia engine, we have to deal with fundamental challenges related to granularity, interoperability or context resolving. We strongly believe that computing technology has evolved enough to revisit and address these challenges, laying the foundation for a wide range of innovative use cases for efficiently managing cross-media content in modern desktop environments.

Research paper: https://beatsigner.com/publications/back-to-the-future-bringing-original-hypermedia-and-cross-media-concepts-to-modern-desktop-environments.pdf

Transcript

1. 2 December 2005
   Beat Signer, Reinout Roels, Robert van Barlingen & Brent Willems
   beatsigner.com
   Web & Information Systems Engineering Lab
   Department of Computer Science
   Vrije Universiteit Brussel
   

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2. RSL Hypermedia Metamodel
   B. Signer and M.C. Norrie, As We May Link: A General Metamodel
   for Hypermedia Systems, Proceedings of ER 2007, November 2007
   x
   

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3. Interactive Paper
   B. Signer, M. Grossniklaus and M.C. Norrie, Interactive Paper as a Mobile
   Client for a Multi-Channel Web Information System WWWJ 10(4), 2007
   xxxxxx
   

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4. PimVis Personal Information Management
   S. Trullemans, A. Sanctorum and B. Signer, PimVis: Exploring and Re-finding
   Documents in Cross-Media Information Spaces, Proceedings of AVI 2016
   xxxxxxx
   

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5. MindXpres Presentation Platform
   https://mindxpres.com
   x
   

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6. eSPACE Framework for IoT Applications
   A. Sanctorum and B. Signer, A Unifying Reference Framework and Model
   for Adaptive Distributed Hybrid User Interfaces, Proceedings of RCIS 2019
   x
   

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7. Common underlying
   representation of data, cross-
   media links and structures via
   RSL-based hypermedia engine
   supporting legacy applications
   

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8. RSL-based Hypermedia Engine
   RSL-based Hypermedia Engine
   Legacy Applications
   File System Driver
   Hypermedia-enabled Applications
   HT2021.docx
   HT2021.docx
   …
   

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9. Next Generation File Manager
   Brent Willems
   

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10. System-wide hypermedia engine
    at operating system level, enabling
    cross-media information management
    across application boundaries
    

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11. References
    [1] B. Signer and M.C. Norrie, As We May Link:
    A General Metamodel for Hypermedia Systems, Pro-
    ceedings of ER 2007, 26th International Conference
    on Conceptual Modeling, Auckland, New Zealand,
    November 2007
    ▪ https://beatsigner.com/publications/signer_ER2007.pdf
    [2] B. Signer, M. Grossniklaus and M.C. Norrie,
    Interactive Paper as a Mobile Client for a Multi-
    Channel Web Information System, World Wide Web
    Journal (WWW), Vol. 10, No. 4, Springer,
    December 2007
    ▪ https://beatsigner.com/publications/signer_WWWJ2007.pdf
    

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12. References ...
    [3] S. Trullemans, A. Sanctorum and B. Signer,
    PimVis: Exploring and Re-finding Documents in Cross-
    Media Information Spaces, Proceedings of AVI 2016,
    International Working Conference on Advanced Visual
    Interfaces, Bari, Italy, June 2016
    ▪ https://beatsigner.com/publications/trullemans_AVI2016.pdf
    [4] A.A.O Tayeh, Payam Ebrahimi and B. Signer, Cross-
    Media Document Linking and Navigation, Proceedings
    of DocEng 2018, 18th ACM Symposium on Document
    Engineering, Halifax, Canada, August 2018
    ▪ https://beatsigner.com/publications/tayeh_DocEng2018.pdf
    

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13. References ...
    [5] R. Roels and B. Signer, A Conceptual Frame-
    work and Content Model for Next Generation Presen-
    tation Solutions, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-
    Computer Interaction (PACMHCI), 3(Issue EICS),
    June 2019
    ▪ https://beatsigner.com/publications/roels_PACMHCI2019.pdf
    [6] A. Sanctorum and B. Signer, A Unifying Reference
    Framework and Model for Adaptive Distributed Hybrid
    User Interfaces, Proceedings of RCIS 2019, 13th Inter-
    national Conference on Research Challenges in Infor-
    mation Science, Brussels, Belgium, May 2019
    ▪ https://beatsigner.com/publications/sanctorum_RCIS2019.pdf
    

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14. References ...
    [7] B. Signer, What is Wrong with Digital Docu-
    ments? A Conceptual Model for Structural Cross-
    Media Content Composition and Reuse, Proceedings
    of ER 2010, 29th International Conference on Concep-
    tual Modeling, Vancouver, Canada, November 2010
    ▪ https://beatsigner.com/publications/signer_ER2010.pdf
    [8] B. Signer, Towards Cross-Media Information Spaces
    and Architectures, Proceedings of RCIS 2019,
    13th International Conference on Research Chal-
    lenges in Information Science, Brussels, Belgium,
    May 2019
    ▪ https://beatsigner.com/publications/signer_RCIS2019.pdf
    

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15. References ...
    [9] B. Signer, R. Roels, R. van Barlingen and
    B. Willems, Back to the Future: Bringing Original
    Hypermedia and Cross-Media Concepts to Modern
    Desktop Environments, Proceedings of Hypertext
    2021, 32nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social
    Media, Virtual Event, August 2021
    ▪ https://beatsigner.com/publications/signer_Hypertext2021.pdf
    

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