Scripting Facilities in Open Hypermedia: Experiences from the Webvise Open Hypermedia System

This paper discusses an approach to scripting in open hypermedia systems. The approach is based on an embedded interpreter that enables scripts to communicate with the hypermedia engine as well as external applications in an open way. The design and implementation of the scripting facilities in the Webvise open hypermedia system exemplify this approach. In Webvise, scripting is closely connected to user-defined types. A semantic type describes user-defined data and behaviour of hypermedia objects. Using a general method-combination scheme based on before and after methods, users may define scripts on hypermedia objects in the Webvise open hypermedia framework. Scripts are executed on the client-side of the hypermedia system, thus allowing for the use of capabilities of integrated applications. The scripting facilities are presented by means of two simple but powerful applications.