Issues of Information Semantics and Granularity in Cross-Media Publishing

While there have been dramatic increases in the use of digital technologies for the storage and processing of information, the affordances of paper have ensured its retention as a key information medium. Recent developments in digitally augmented paper provide the potential to embed active links within printed documents, thereby turning paper into an interactive medium. In this paper, we address the issues of information granularity and semantics that arise in integrating paper as a first-class interactive information medium in hypermedia systems and show that the information server is vital in realising the true potential of this vision. Further, we discuss the authoring issues of cross-media information environments and the forms of tools required to support the various categories of authoring activity.