Digital publication (panel session): status, opportunities and problems

Digital publications are a reality. High-resolution workstation displays and low-cost mass storage systems create an electronic reading environment that ex-ceeds the capabilities of traditional printed publications. Digital publications include text, line art, still images, and also include sound, video sequences and animations. However, while the opportunities for digital publication are great, there are many associated problems. This panel addresses the current status of digital publications, its opportunities, problems (such as lack of standards), centralized document database development, documents to workstation distribution, and appropriate user interfaces. Dick Phillips Folks, if you would take a seat we ' l l begin the last session of the a f t e rnoon and the last session of SIGGRAPH. You are all going to be r ichly rewarded for hav ing stuck it ou t for t he last a f t e rnoon of the conference. My n a m e is Dick Phill ips and I 'm the chai r of this session this af ternoon, wh ich is called Digital Publ icat ion: Status, Oppor tun i t i e s and Problems. The panelists' p resen ta t ions are sort of cast in the framework of the parable I know you 've all heard of. Five b l ind m e n approach an e lephan t , touch different parts of the an ima l and render an op in ion of wha t it looks like. Th ink of digi ta l pub l ica t ion as an e l e p h a n t wi th the five of us on the panel walk ing a r o u n d this e l ephan t , feeling it and giving you our impress ions of wha t this beast is. It is manyface ted and I ' l l t h i n k you ' l l agree when we are done tha t all we are do ing is to describe to you wha t we t h i n k the various aspects of digi tal pub l i ca t ions are. I 'm going to speak last, we are going to have a couple of c o m p u t e r demons t r a t i ons to give you some idea of wha t digital pub l ica t ions are, so d o n ' t go away. Our pane l consists of a group of good friends and col leagues of mine . The first speaker is going to be Michael Hawley, from the MIT Media Lab a n d from NEXT, Inc. He is going to be fol lowed by Michael Lesk, who is from Bellcore, and he will in tu rn will be fol lowed by Andy van Dam from Brown Universi ty . Then Rick Beach f rom Xerox PARC will speak and I will be last, as I said a m o m e n t ago. I 'm going to let all of the o the r panel is ts tell you as much more about themselves as they care to, but let 's begin and I hope you ' l l en joy this very last par t of the a f te rnoon. Michael .