Spatial Hypertext Editing Tools for Wiki Web Systems

Abstract: This thesis considers the provision of comprehensible and interpretable tools in the wiki web system. This implies that an extensive research has been made upon the system, i.e., a hypertext system at the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University in Australia. The process to develop these tools is based on certain requirements due to the user. The wiki web system is becoming more and more common in communities, projects, education etc. Companies provide wiki systems to share project information as an online collaborative tool. Another way of using a wiki is as an encyclopaedia. This is currently done in Wikipedia which has been an online wiki encyclopaedia since 2001. This solution is an exceptional way to extract and share information quickly. The problem in a wiki is to get an interpretable overview of the whole system, as well as to organise the pages and the structure of the pages in a fine way. The problem is that the number of wiki pages, which are represented as hyperlinks in the system, quickly grown. Therefore, the user needs to be able to navigate within the system and this will require a map. The proposed solution is to provide such a map, namely, a global view of the system. Likewise, the user needs to be able to organize the information, and this will require special tools. The proposed solution is to provide such tools, namely, split and merge tools. In order to develop these tools, direct manipulation and usability should be taken into consideration