3
• Intermittent connections (modems, E-mail, “sneakernet”)
A fast local network is ideal for cooperative editing, and allows the use of traditional
synchronization techniques without creating bottlenecks. This will remain possible given any
continuously available communications access (though even WAN connections are far from
perfect in this respect). When communications are intermittent, such strategies are insuffi-
cient; inconsistencies in the collaborators’ views of the shared data are bound to occur (Greif
and Sarin 1987).
A great number of human factors are critical in effectively supporting the writing task. A
complete list, even of the known factors would be hard to give here, but the following list of
general goals has guided all the work in this dissertation:
• Its model should be natural to users, at least to the extent that it is exposed to them
through the interface. This is easiest if the underlying data model is natural in itself.
The basic objects in a system should correspond to entities that are in the user’s ontol-
ogy.
• It must allow meaningful information filtering and selection by each collaborator. Col-
laboration introduces a whole new set of problems, and users must have easy, natural
access to the information they need to solve those problems.
• It should assist users to evolve their own work process, rather than enforcing one on
them. While specialized situations may require various sorts of policy enforcement, such
policies are application, organization, and sometimes personnel dependent. Generic tool-
kits, especially, should strive for generality and policy neutrality, providing default poli-
cies only for those applications that do not need their own.
Palimpsest is my attempt to balance human requirements against technical ones, while
making minimal commitments to underlying network technology and application-specific
policy decisions.
• Intermittent connections (modems, E-mail, “sneakernet”)
A fast local network is ideal for cooperative editing, and allows the use of traditional
synchronization techniques without creating bottlenecks. This will remain possible given any
continuously available communications access (though even WAN connections are far from
perfect in this respect). When communications are intermittent, such strategies are insuffi-
cient; inconsistencies in the collaborators’ views of the shared data are bound to occur (Greif
and Sarin 1987).
A great number of human factors are critical in effectively supporting the writing task. A
complete list, even of the known factors would be hard to give here, but the following list of
general goals has guided all the work in this dissertation:
• Its model should be natural to users, at least to the extent that it is exposed to them
through the interface. This is easiest if the underlying data model is natural in itself.
The basic objects in a system should correspond to entities that are in the user’s ontol-
ogy.
• It must allow meaningful information filtering and selection by each collaborator. Col-
laboration introduces a whole new set of problems, and users must have easy, natural
access to the information they need to solve those problems.
• It should assist users to evolve their own work process, rather than enforcing one on
them. While specialized situations may require various sorts of policy enforcement, such
policies are application, organization, and sometimes personnel dependent. Generic tool-
kits, especially, should strive for generality and policy neutrality, providing default poli-
cies only for those applications that do not need their own.
Palimpsest is my attempt to balance human requirements against technical ones, while
making minimal commitments to underlying network technology and application-specific
policy decisions.
