Structuring Complex Interactive Information

To improve the structure of complex information when it is to be presented electronically, technical communicators may turn to ideas taken from object-oriented programming, to clarify and revive the structure of the material in existing documents before mounting them online. But when an organization starts moving information onto the Web, technical communicators may go through a phase transition, as the system becomes so much more complex it exhibits emergent behaviors, and demands new attitudes, concepts, and work from the technical communicator.

Price, Jonathan R. Communication Circle, The (1997). Articles>Information Design>Multimedia

Towards Multimodal Public Information Systems    

In the future e-Home, information from various sources, located both globally and locally, are at hand for a wide range of tasks. Many of these tasks involve finding out about public authorities' rules and regulations. The Public Tax authorities, for instance, provide hundreds of documents on their web site (forms, FAQ’s, tax rules, etc.). Currently, the user is restricted to navigating and searching these information sources by clicking hyperlinks or typing in keywords in a search box. Suppose a citizen needs to know what the local tax in his area is. By providing the keywords “kommunalskatt” (local tax) and “Linköping” to the search engine five documents are retrieved and the user can continue clicking on the provided links to see if the answer is provided in the documents found. On the other hand, supposing that the user had the ability to state the information problem in natural language.

Merkel, Magnus and Arne Jonsson. Linkopings Universitet (2002). Articles>Information Design>Government>Multimedia

Use Data URIs to Include Media in XML

There are many ways to link to non-XML content within XML, including binary content. Sometimes you need to roll all such external content directly into the XML. Data scheme URIs are one way to specify a full resource within a URI, which you can then use in XML constructs. In this tip, Uche Ogbuji shows how to use this to bundle related media into a single file.

Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>Multimedia>XML