SemCW: Semantic collaborative writing using RST

During collaborative writing each author works on a copy of the shared document. These copies are then merged to produce the final document. This asynchronous work is supported by several collaborative writing tools. While these tools are excellent at merging and detecting syntactic conflicts, they are not able to easily recognise semantic inconsistencies. This hinders the coherence of the document because while each individual copy might be well constructed, they may not be after the merge. To address this, we investigate the combination of the Rhetorical Structure Theory with Operational Transformation approach. In this paper, we define a data model, a set of operations to manipulate the RST structures and a set of transformation functions. A validity checker alerts the authors to areas in the text with possible semantic lapses in the merged documents.

[1]  P. Lowry,et al.  Building a Taxonomy and Nomenclature of Collaborative Writing to Improve Interdisciplinary Research and Practice , 2004 .

[2]  Pascal Molli,et al.  Tombstone Transformation Functions for Ensuring Consistency in Collaborative Editing Systems , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing.

[3]  De Silva,et al.  A narrative-based collaborative writing tool for constructing coherent technical documents , 2007 .

[4]  Hala Skaf-Molli,et al.  Supporting Collaborative Writing of XML Documents , 2007, ICEIS.

[5]  Clarence A. Ellis,et al.  Concurrency control in groupware systems , 1989, SIGMOD '89.

[6]  Jean Ferrié,et al.  Concurrent operations in a distributed and mobile collaborative environment , 1998, Proceedings 14th International Conference on Data Engineering.

[7]  SYLVIE NOËL,et al.  Empirical Study on Collaborative Writing: What Do Co-authors Do, Use, and Like? , 2004, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[8]  Hala Skaf-Molli,et al.  Narratives to preserve coherence in collaborative writing , 2006 .

[9]  Yanchun Zhang,et al.  Achieving convergence, causality preservation, and intention preservation in real-time cooperative editing systems , 1998, TCHI.

[10]  David Reitter,et al.  Step by step: underspecified markup in incremental rhetorical analysis , 2003, LINC@EACL.

[11]  Jane N. Mosier,et al.  Collaborative Writing Is Hard to Support: A Field Study of Collaborative Writing , 1997, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[12]  Hala Skaf-Molli,et al.  Using the transformational approach to build a safe and generic data synchronizer , 2003, GROUP.

[13]  William C. Mann,et al.  Rhetorical Structure Theory: Toward a functional theory of text organization , 1988 .

[14]  Siegfried Handschuh,et al.  SALT - Semantically Annotated LaTeX for scientific publications , 2007 .

[15]  Peter Henderson,et al.  A Narrative Approach to Collaborative Writing - A Business Process Model , 2006, ICEIS.

[16]  Yasushi Saito,et al.  Optimistic replication , 2005, CSUR.

[17]  Antony I. T. Rowstron,et al.  The IceCube approach to the reconciliation of divergent replicas , 2001, PODC '01.

[18]  Hala Skaf-Molli,et al.  Semantic Consistency for Collaborative Systems , 2003 .

[19]  Alistair Knott,et al.  A data-driven methodology for motivating a set of coherence relations , 1996 .

[20]  Hala Skaf-Molli,et al.  New Work Modes for Collaborative Writing , 2007, Enterprise Information Systems and Web Technologies.