Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 6.8
Physical folders pro-
vide for defining collections
of documents in an intuitive
manner
the linked document passage. She therefore draws a vertical line besides the passage
where the association gesture is made. Such scope markings are deleted the same
way as association gestures by a zig-zag gesture. If the document contains sev-
eral columns, each column has an own association area. A scope can span several
columns and/or pages.
In a user study on how people make references within traditional paper docu-
ments, we found that users often do not explicitly define the scope of a reference. In-
stead, the scope remains fuzzy and refers to an unspecified passage or item near the
reference. In contrast to prior work, our interaction also supports fuzzy scope defi-
nitions. These associations are made in the association column without any further
specification. In addition to these formalized gestures that are computer-interpreted,
users can make any informal markings for the scope definition, which are displayed
like normal handwriting in the electronic viewer (e.g. brackets, lines and arrows).
While users understand them, the system is agnostic of their meaning.
Document Collections
For links from or to a collection of documents (one-to-
many or many-to-many), CoScribe includes the concept of folders. Physically plac-
ing a document into a folder is a very intuitive established interaction for defining a
collection of paper documents. Users can then easily reference the entire collection
by referring to the folder. Our slightly formalized interaction design is inspired by
this practice. A folder (Fig. 6.8) contains one or several documents and can be the
starting or ending point of an association gesture, as it contains an association area
on its cover. Similarly, the digital representation of a folder in the ecological view
acts as an association area. In order to detect that physical documents are added to
a folder or removed from it, the interaction technique relies on location tracking of
document and folder positions. At places where no tracking infrastructure is avail-
able, the user can alternatively perform a pen gesture to inform the system about an
