Programme

This is a summary of the ECHT90 conference program. The conference consisted of a day of tutorial sessions, then two days of paper presentations with parallel track of panel sessions and an exhibition of products and posters. The content of most of these are are available in the proceedings, which were distributed in paper book form at registration time (the proceedings include the question/answers of the panel sessions, surely a world first!). The working language was English. The term Hypertext should now certainly be replaced by hypermedia: all products I (RC) saw that were remotely interesting included not only text and graphics, but also the possibility of animation (eg. video) and sound (eg. voice). The overall attendence was around 450.

Tutorials

These were around 3 hours each in length, and given by invited experts in the field.

• Introduction to HyperText and Hypermedia Roberto Minio, GMD_IPSI (FRG)
• Introduction and Overview of HyperText systems and Hypermedia Applications. Paul D. Khan, IRIS - Brown University (USA)
• Hypertexts and Databases P. Paolini, Politechnico di Milano (I), R. Schwartz, Borland Int. (CA, USA)
• Education uses of hypermedia D.M.Russel, Xerox PARC
• Hypertext writing for technical documentation M. Bernstein, Eastgate Cambridge (USA)
• "Advanced tutorial in Hypermedia Research" by Norman Meyrowitz , IRIS - Brown University (USA)
• User Interface Metaphors in Hypertext Janet Walker, Digital Research Center, Boston (MA, USA)
• Automatic and machine aided construction of hypertext bases R. Kuhlen, Univ. of Constance, FRG

Paper Sessions

Except for the first two sessions and the last, these ran in parallel with the panel sessions.

• Prof. Peter Brown (Univ. Kent, UK) gave the opening keynote address, on Assessing the quality of HyperDocuments . He discussed his experience refereeing hypertext documents produced by his students, and warned that active books were a very nutritious substrate for viruses.
• Toolkits for hypermedia applications
• Formal models and query languages
• Databases, Indices, and normative knowledge
• Argumentation, design and knowledge acquisition
• Turning Text into Hypertext
• Designing and reading hyperdocuments
• Navigation and Browsing
• Building hypertext applications
• Book Computers: the 4th Wave

Panel Sessions

The panel sessions were held in a smaller room than the papers, with a panel of 3 to 5 people entertaining an audience which varied between 50 and 300. The sessions each started with a (short) presentation by each of the panellists, after which the floor was opened for discussion. The panels were nominally on the following subjects:-

• What should hypermedia authoring systems for computer aided instruction look like?
• The advantages of hypertext for large information spaces: where are the big systems?
• Hypertext and Electronic Publishing This was the panel which was to have had a discussion of standardisation, and should have included Steve Newcombe who in the end couldn't come. There was a discussion of the desirability of structured documents .
• What is specific about user interfaces for hypertext systems?
• Hypertext and Information retrieval: What are the fundamental concepts?
• Strategic issues in European HyperText Research and Development