UI's for inputting and presenting the metadata of

hypermedia documents

Kai Kuikkaniemi

12.11.2002

HUT T-121.900

Idea of the study

• Discuss the role of metadata in creating context specific user interface for hypermedia documents

• Theorethical study

• By using a theorethical model, I try to examplify the possibilities and importance of metadata

Agenda

• Introduction

• Usage of metadata today

• Model

• Usage of metadata tomorrow

• Conclusions

Definitions (1)

• Title: UI's for inputting and presenting the metadata of hypermedia documents

• Inputting– Where does the metadata come from?

• Presenting– How is it presented to user

• Metadata– Definition or description of data

Definitions (2)

Hypermedia document (short documents):• Orthodoxical view

– Text document with graphics and sounds = webpage

• The view in this study– Limited interactivity (can be said static document)– Multiuser, communicational– Data structure, components

Text documents

Collaboration

Forms

MailWikies

Weblogs

Static web pages

Chat

Presentation

Simple archives

Metadata

• General division of metadata in documents

Semantic

Status

People

History Layout

StructuralType

Semantic metadata today

• E.g. word definitions– (Nokia the city, Nokia the company)

• Known problem • Hard to input in any current (basic e.g. Word)

document handling applicatations• Basic way to present is call-out box above the

word• Spelling check and thesarus functionality in

word are related functionalities

Status and Type metadata

• Status – Finished, checked...

• Type– Document type (report, messaging window)– Keywords, Class

• Functionality available (hard)• Same user interface for input and access• Fairly un-used

People and History metadata

• People– Who am I

• History – Who, What (changes), When

• This information is mostly included explicitly within the document

• Date of last changes updates automatically

Structural and layout metadata

• Structural– Headings, document hierarchy (in general)

• Layout– How heading looks like, red text

• Tightly bind together • What you see is what you get• In Word there is outline (structure) and

document style (layout) functions

General: metadata today

• Concept is widely spreaded• Advantages are acknowledged• Fairly unused• Substitute functionalites provided by

programsMetadata is hard to useMost of the metadata types there exists

no (proper) UI’s

Model

• Unified hypermedia document management (reading, writing, using) tool

• Based on webapplication(s) and modifiable web browser

• User manages documents always throw web browser

• Web browser has modifiable (extendable) UI

Model outline

• Context specific UI for each document is created based on:– Document type (template), history (other users)– Browser resources (downloaded components)– User preferences (how likes to edit text, uses shortcuts,

etc..)

• Document locates always in web server• Template centric (includes functionality and UI)

Model: Sequence diagram

Document applicationDocument

WebBrowser

User textagent

Documentinterface

agent

ExternalUI

Components

Documentcontentand UI

Documenthandler

Purpose ofrequestingdocument

Document handler ask user own agent

to compose UI

Agents Discuss

document content and

UI

Model: Metadata usage

Document managementapplication

Document

WebBrowser

User textagent

Documentinterface

agent

ExternalUI

Components

Documentcontentand UI

Documenthandler

Purpose ofrequestingdocument

Document handler ask user own agent

to compose UI

Agents Discuss

document content and

UI

Peoplemetadata

Historymetadata

Layoutmetadata

Type,Status

metadata

Semanticmetadata

Advantages of the model

• Unified metadata usage• Documents accessible everywhere

– always published

• Documents more machine understanable • Easier collaboration• Correct interface for different usages• More info (usage of different applications) for

agent

Model in practice

• Forces driving towards this kind of application– Variety of application, comblicated– Publishing and collaboration need– Resource (web, cpu) development– Business process formalization– Multidevice, multienvironment – Search functionalites, semantic web

• Enabling technologies– XUL, XForms, Phoenix (frontend)– Wikies, Weblogs (middleware)– Application server, DMS, PDM (backend)

Metadata tomorrow

... if the model would be true

• How metadata elements would be generated (input)?

• How can metadata elements be accessed (presentting)?

• More metadata is generated automatically, it is easier for user to generate more metadata

Semantics

• Semantic data is always context specific• There should be different context specific

libraries for documents to assign– Formal (different science vocabulary)– Informal (e.g. chat language)

• Simple definition for words should included in to document (call-out)

• Links ?

Status and type

• Status should be generated automatically and/or questions from user (E.g. is this finished?)– Different parts of documents can be in different status

(processing)

• Status should be explicitely integrated into document outlook

• Type should be assigned in the template or in the beginning

• Accessing type is relevant already when document is searched

People and history

• History and people metadata should be generated automatically

• People are metadata– people metadata is important when searching,

evaluating and accessing document

• History data helps check errors (major undo) and understand document progress (for reader)

Structural and layout

• For generating structural and layout metadata there should be separated functions and views available

• Structure and layout are presented implicitly when in the document presentation format

Conclusions

• Metadata could be the key to – make document handling easier– context specific UI’s– structure variety of content

• There is a lot of metadata with different purposes, and different accessing and presenting rules Metadata types should be kept separate

• User who generates document is rarely the one who access the document metadata Automatize metadata generation as much as possible