A marking based interface for collaborative writing

We describe a system to support a particular model of document creation. In this model, the document flows from the primary author to one or more collaborators. They annotate it, then return it to the author who makes the final changes. Annotations are made using conventional marks, typically using a stylus. The intent is to match the flow and mark-up of paper documents observed in the everyday world, . The system is very much modeled on Wang FreeStyle (Perkins, Blatt, Workman and Ehrlich, 1989; Francik and Akagi, 1989; & Levine and Ehrlich, in press). Our contribution is to incorporate mark recognition into the system and to explore some novel navigation tools that are enabled by the higher-level data structures that we use. The system is described and the results of initial usertesting are reported. INTRODUCTION Collaborative writing occurs in many different forms (Posner, 1991). Our system supports a model of document creation in which the document flows from the primary author to one or more collaborators. They annotate it, then return it to the author who makes the final changes, This flow of the document is illustrated in Figure 1. Annotations are created by marking-up a copy of the document with a stylus. The intent is to match the flow and the way paper documents are marked-up in the everyday world. Other systems, such as Wang FreeStyle, emulate this model of document creation (Perkins, Blatt, Workman and Ehrlich, 1989; Francik and Akagi, 1989; & Levine and Ehrlich, in press). With FreeStyle, annotations are made not only with a stylus but also by recording speech. In our system annotations can only be made with the stylus. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for diract commercial advantage, tha ACM copyright notice and the dtle of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission. . . @ 1993 ACM ().89791-62&x/93/0()1 1...$1 .SO With FreeStyle, the copy of the document that is distributed is only a “dumb” snap-shot of the original. Annotations are integrated as a separate layer to the “snapshot.” Furthermore, there is no computer recognition of the markings. To edit the final document, the user needs two J%ncloal Author Col~orat@ t Creates / Edits document Sends copies Annotate to collaborators document — —