From hypertext to active communication/information systems

In this paper we advocate the integration of advanced communication facilities into a distributed hypermedia system. We will first develop a set of user requirements and then come up with a simple design based on three orthogonal concepts (annotation, active collections, and active documents) that can be used to implement the required features in a certain implementation of a distributed hypermedia system (Hyper-G).

We also show how allowing to apply the three concepts to every object of the information space (as implied by the principle of orthogonality) transforms the passive information system into an 'active communication/information system' in which the user is not only able to contribute to the information body, but is also able to let the system actively seek and deliver information according to the user's interests.