To: Dick.Bulterman@cwi.nl, Lynda.Hardman@cwi.nl, J.R.van.Ossenbruggen@cwi.nl, Sjoerd.Mullender@cwi.nl Subject: Aarhus University Trip Report Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 13:08:58 +0100 From: Lloyd Rutledge Aarhus University Trip Report On November 23rd and 24th, 1998, I visited Aarhus University in Denmark to give a talk and to meet with researchers there. The talk was titled "XML and SMIL: The Developing Infrastructure for Archived Media on the Web". The primary person I met with was Kaj Gronback, a lecturer in the University's Computer Science Department, and a leading researching in the field of Hypertext. I also meet with Peter Nurnberg, who is originally from Texas A&M but is there for two years as a visiting researcher. Uffe Will, who is starting a computer science department elsewhere in Denmark, attended the talk. David Hicks, Uffe mentioned, will be joining him in this new department. I also spoke with Niels Olof, a doctorate student who does much of the programming for the lab. Finally, I ran into Wendy MacKay there, who is a visiting professor. The lab researches open hypermedia systems. They are heavily involved in the Open Hypermedia Systems working group, which is how we met. They implement cooperative linking between separate systems. They also implement annotative links. The different systems communicate through the Open Hypermedia Protocol, which they are developing in cooperation with other members of the OHS working group. Much of their interface involves adding menus to existing applications like Explorer and Word. They have also developed a hyperbase system called Coconut on which these links are stored. With their system, you can access documents on the Web and also load the third party links from the hyperbase. The third party links become superimposed over the Web documents. Different styles of starting point display can be specified for the third party links using CSS. The link annotations are encoded in XML. Their implementation also adds annotative links. The use can highlight a portion of the document in the browser and use a pull-down or right-mouse button menu to create an annotation. That portion then becomes the starting point for a link. In creating an annotation, a portion of that or another document can be highlighted to become the ending point for that link. New text can also be entered to act as the ending point. Their implementation is primarily encoded in Java. We also discussed the liaison effort between OHS and XML Linking. The work done by Aarhus and other members of the OHS WG provides examples, insight, motivation, idea and possibly implementations for XLink and XPointer. XLink and XPointer, of course, have the potential to impact SMIL. We discussed some suggestions they have for these standards. They are not W3C members, and have no plans for direct interaction with the XML Linking group. The are interested in working with SMIL. They have been using G2 and intend to download the GRiNS player. Potential collaboration between our groups exists in having them do to GRiNS what they've done to Explorer and Word. They could add the processing of third party links to GRiNS. They could add interfaces for allowing link annotations to be created through the GRiNS player. They could provide insight for how the use of annotated external links in the next version of SMIL, and for how these could be edited with the GRiNS authoring environment. -Lloyd