The Individualized Electronic Newspaper: an example of an active publication

During the last four years the PaVE department at GMD-IPSI experimented with the Individualized Electronic Newspaper, an active publication that is individualized and composed on demand for a reader, and then delivered electronically. The work concentrated on the user interface design for active electronic publications and, in particular, on the investigation of publishing system architectures supporting the preparation and production of active electronic publications. The paper introduces two alternative interfaces for an electronic publication showing the potential of the electronic medium for publication design. The main part of the paper presents our approach to making such publications possible: a combination of structured documents and knowledge-basedtechniques based on a sound publishing model. This approach guided the design of an integrated publication environment for the preparation and production of active documents.