Topics

Current Status

The LivingBook prototype is an evolving demonstration of concept that is still very much in the formative stages.

The purpose of the prototype is to elicit feedback, which will influence the direction of it's future evolution. . .

The prototype aims to demonstrate how various traditional, paper-based document components can be brought alive in a computational environment, and thereby supporting new kinds of collaboration and knowledge construction.

• Terminology and References are represented as computational objects, allowing them to have active behavior that goes beyond that of paper-based documents. See the LivingBook Object Model for examples.

• Because the contents of the book are represented in a fairly fine-grained structure, different views of the contents are possible. Hopefully, these views can provide a reader with a new type of understanding that is not possible with a paper-based book. See Section Views for more information about the views supported by the LivingBook.

While the vision of the LivingBook is a document that readers can extend and personalize, the current version is mostly "read-only". Terminology and Reference objects can be annotated, but these annotations take place in separate environments, which is probably much too confusing to readers.

ISSUE: should we think of the LivingBook as a stand alone information space, or should it be integrated with other information spaces?

This question is important, because the current implementation using DynaGloss and Sources supports integration with other information spaces. As noted above, this integration has the potential to confuse readers, and some further design work is required to strike a balance between the "stand alone" and "integrated" perspectives and implementations.