Virtual Documents

Tom Gruber, Stanford University

Abstract of talk given at the Stanford Computer Forum WWW Workshop - September 20-21, 1994

Virtual documents are hypermedia documents that are generated on demand, in response to user (reader) input. Unlike a hand crafted web of static pages, a virtual document can provide answers to a huge space of potential information needs, and can adapt the presentation to the reader. Virtual documents can be seen in software delivery modalities such as forms-based query interfaces to databases, client-based (remote) user interfaces to applications, and application embedding. The standards and installed base of the World Wide Web provide the basis for applying these sorts of techniques to make true virtual documents a reality today.

In this talk we demonstrate the potential of virtual documents with several working examples of from the World Wide Web. The possibilities include

Generating virtual documentation from formal models, so that the documentation always reflects the artifact being described.
Incorporating the results of computer-assisted analysis in presentations and discussions, so that colleagues can replicate and examine the claims
Delivering on-line tutorials on interactive applications or services, in which the examples actually run
Collaboratively authoring shared virtual documents

The talk will also introduce some of the technical issues and tradeoffs, such as

Compiling versus generating dynamically; caching strategies
Deliverying new functionality on the client or server side; retaining platform independence
Reentrancy, user independence, and how to store state using a stateless protocol

[Slides for this talk] [Workshop Information] [Workshop Readings]

Virtual Documents

Tom Gruber, Stanford University

copyright (c) 1994 Thomas R. Gruber