Collaborative document annotation using electronic mail

Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to describe an approach to software development, the small scale approach, that is particularly appropriate for groupware that has a target user population that is truly global. Many of the reasons why the small scale approach is appropriate are described. To support the paper's primary purpose, the domain of document annotation in collaborative writing is used to illustrate the requirements of such global groupware. A simulation shows how the proposed software might be used by individuals and how annotations might be automatically combined. The requirements analysis from this leads to a high level program design which is implemented, for illustration, as a PERL program.