Computerized notebooks

• Desktop publishing in 80's (Runoff, TeX, WordStar, Word, WordPerfect,...)
• Multimedia after 1990 (Power Point, Macromedia Director, Toolbook, ...)
• Internet and WWW; 1993, Mosaic; (HTML, CGI, VRML, Java, JavaScript, ...)

These tools allowed to everyone to produce her/his own materials. The use of colors became cheap. Since the text stays in author's hands it is easy to adapt and to improve. The ease of multiplying the text by copying encourage the cooperation and interchange of materials.

The expansion of WWW after 1993 offered another possibility with its solutions (HTTP, HTML, servers, browsers, ...). Besides providing, by HTML, standard means for formatting hypertext and interactivity it also facilitates the availability and distribution of materials (documents, data, programs, multimedia), and communications among users (mail, conferences, chat, collaboration, ...). The WWW solutions, realized in HTML and extensions, offer several benefits in respect to the 'classical' tools and are becoming very popular among the authors of e-text materials.

©

MCC'98; Dubrovnik, June 22-27, 1998