Conclusion

LINCKS fits very well in as a document or image server on a single site, and in particular the support of multiple views generated from the same information. Further the underlying database server keeps all versions, and allows us to trace the original source and the owner of the information stored in the database. The linking mechanism allows easy sharing of information between several documents (e.g. headers, footers, personal information etc.).

The implementation of the first prototype was rather straight forward, since we could build on top of the CIM layer (section 2). The CIM layer creates the reference structure and we only had to add the extra statements in FORMATX for all GPDs and the small application language. Based on the short comings discovered during the implementation of the prototype, we have started the work on a second front end:

• Will be implemented as a stand-alone server (as well as CGI program), to reduce the number of connections/pipes.

• Replacing our home grown language with TCL [Ous93] or Python [vR94].

• Support for HEAD and other methods by making the FORMATX part independent of the GPD.

• Form support, where we will generate a HTML form from the reference structure. Fields to fill in corresponds to what we call ``place holders''. The field names will be mapped to positions in the reference structure using `cursors'.

• Integration with future search mechanisms in LINCKS database server with search mechanisms in WWW.

• Today LINCKS (and xlincks) has support for parallel editing where users receive notifications when parallel editing of items occurs. We will add support for notification messages on the generated HTML pages.

• Markup language to allow basic markup within a paragraph. We intend to investigate SGML [Gol90], HTML and during the close future.