Reflections on NoteCards: seven issues for the next generation of hypermedia systems

ABSTRACT

NoteCards is a general hypermedia environment designed to help people work with ideas. Its intended users are authors, designers, and other intellectual laborers engaged in analyzing information, designing artifacts, and generally processing ideas. The system provides these users with a variety of hypermedia-based tools for collecting, representing, managing, interrelating, and communicating ideas. This paper presents the NoteCards system as a foil against which to explore some of the major limitations of the current generation of hypermedia systems. In doing so, this paper highlights seven of the major issues that must be addressed in the next generation of hypermedia systems. These seven issues are: search and query, composite nodes, virtual structures, computational engines, versioning, collaborative work, and tailorability. For each of these issues, the papers describes the limitations inherent in NoteCards and the prospects for doing improving the situation in future systems.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.7 DOCUMENT AND TEXT PROCESSING
      I.7.2 Document Preparation
          Subjects: Hypertext/hypermedia

General Terms:
Design, Documentation, Languages, Management, Performance, Theory