Reusing Dynamic Document Fragment through Virtual Documents: Key Issues In Document Engineering

Electronic documents may obviously no more be considered as a simple representation of their paper counterpart. They become dynamic components whose content may be modified accordingly to users interaction but also in reaction to modifications in the user's environment (such as an update operation in a database). They not only include data but also behavior (Scripts, Applets, etc.) that may aim at different purposes (provide appropriate rendering method, supply interaction mechanism to the users, etc.). They also include the hypertext dimension and play an important role in the management of information as well as associated knowledge. The extensive use of such hyperdocuments through the Internet, to disseminate and interact with pieces of information, is currently gaining in importance. Designing information systems that rely on this emerging paradigm clearly requires new methods to produce, share and access distributed information. The paper focus on the reusability of information in distributed environments. It aims at presenting our document based approach to both model active document fragments and specify appropriate methods to build customized virtual documents on the basis of so-called fragments