The Liberation project being negotiated within the
Telematics for Libraries line of the EU Fourth Framework Programme 
proposes to use Hyper-G for 'publishing'.

I don't know very much more about it than appears in the synopses 
document from the EU. There it says:


"The project will prepare a fairly substantial set of multimedia material 
and package it for usage on both CD-ROMs and for network use. Network use 
will be both via the Internet and via local networks that are 'fed' from 
the Internet. ...... Both networked variants will be tested with users at 
the workplace with terminals placed in libraries. The underlying server 
technology is HYPER-G"

Partners include the Institute for Information Processing and Computer 
Supported New Media at Graz itself as well as some publishers (inc. 
Springer Verlag)  and libraries. I notice that the Hallward Library, 
Univ Nottingham is listed as a partner.

The contact name given is Hermann Maurer at the Technische Universitat Graz.


Lorcan



On Tue, 5 Mar 1996, Les Carr wrote:

> Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 11:28:21 +0000 (GMT)
> From: Les Carr <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Cc: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Link integrity
> 
> Mr C A Rusbridge writes:
> > The first seems a strong reason in favour of Hyper-G. I was reminded, 
> > though of Microcosm and the OJF project; Microcosm also has an external 
> > link-base, and might provide some of the same advantages. 
> > 
> > Any-one care to elaborate or comment?
> 
> The OJF project is using the experience gained from Microcosm, and applying
> it to the Web---one of the principle features is the use of separate
> databases of links. On the face of it Hyper-G and Microcosm/OJF seem to
> be very similar, but I think that they have different areas of strength.
> 
> Hyper-G is good for managing documents and links within a closed
> world: all the documents and links are managed by the Hyper-G database and
> can only be manipulated through the database by authorised Hyper-G
> client programs. This is what gives the integrity: no-one can make
> changes to a document without the "system" knowing about it.
> 
> The down-side to this is that only Hyper-G-produced clients can be used, and
> hence only supported formats. To my knowledge there is support for SGML, 
> PostScript and MPEG but no support for other common formats like PDF.
> 
> In contrast, the Microcosm/OJF perspective is to provide link
> management services in an "open" environment, to work with arbitrary
> document formats, and arbitrary applications.  Since the downside of
> this is the resignation of integrity-by-control, the OJF environment is
> providing tools for evaluating link integrity and for dealing with the
> consequences of broken links (should they be hidden from the user,
> reported to the author, cause alarms if the site is unavailable for 3
> days on the trot, mend themselves if the dopcument moves...).
> 
> One could argue that a e-journal repository is an ideal candidate for
> Hyper-G: all the journals are closed and non-intersecting.  One could
> also argue that that is a terribly parochial view: after all what about
> the bibliography links to other publishers' journals? How will you
> manage *those*? This is an example of the OJF's effort to provide
> readers/authors/publishers with hypertext facilities for data which
> they do not control i.e. documents which they cannot put in a local database.
> 
> Both Hyper-G and OJF gave presentations to the British Computer Society's
> Electronic Publications SIG last month (quick plug for BCS EPSIG there!)
> and OJF will be presenting papers on these topics (open vs closed
> environments, link integrity, document control) in May at the next WWW
> conference in Paris and ELVIRA, the Electronic Library Conference at
> De Montfort. Preprints of these and other documents are available
> at the OJF home page <URL: http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/> .
> -- 
> [log in to unmask]               Les Carr
> Tel: +44 703 594479                  Dept of Electronics and Computer Science
> Fax: +44 703 592865                  University of Southampton SO17 1BJ England

Lorcan Dempsey          <URL:http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/~lisld/>
----------------------  -----------------------------------------------
ph: +44 (0)1225 826254  UKOLN (UK Office for Library & Info Networking)
fx: +44 (0)1225 826838  University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK



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