From: stgprao@xing.unocal.com (Richard Ottolini)
Subject: Re: APP: virtual journals
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1992 20:33:24 GMT
Organization: Unocal Corporation, Anaheim, California



In article <1992Feb8.010824.2069@milton.u.washington.edu> mbrown@athos.cs.ua.
edu (Marcus Brown) writes:

>Until the electronic journal is recognized as a respectable avenue for
>publication of real research, no one will submit the kind of research
>and write-ups that will earn that respect.  We are caught in a vicious
>cycle: 

First, we have already gone through stage one of this evolution with the grow-
ing acceptance of digital documents by editors.  This started about a dozen 
years with the American Mathematical Society accepting TeX documents rather 
than paper.  I think many other journals accept e-docs now.

Second, there is already attempts at producing dual-form media: both interac-
tive and printable.  Prof. Jon Claerbout of Stanford distributes his seismology
text both as a CDROM interactive hyperbook and static hardcopy.  The inter-
active version has hyperlink references and regeneratable figures where one can
change parameters, an advantage for studying scientific graphs.  Interestingly,
the motive for the interactive book was to save the programs of students that
generated the figures, often lost when students graduate.

A stumbling block for multi-media is commonly accepted standards.  The Micro-
soft consortium and Adobe have proposed standards for electronic storage and
rendering respectively.  What extensions to multi-media are necessary to
capture virtual worlds?