Ubiquitous Metainformation and the WYWWYWI Principle
Joseph T. Catanio, Nkechi Nnadi, Li Zhang, Michael Bieber, Roberto Galnares · Texas Digital Library (University of Texas) · 2006
Computer systems should provide what you want, when you want it (the WYWWYWI Principle, pronounced "why why why"), but they frequently do not.Our research encourages a new philosophy of design based on the WYWWYWI principle, and the tools for authors to provide this easily.Comprehensive metainformation embodies the WYWWYWI principle.Metainformation includes the structural relationships, content-based relationships, user-declared link-based relationships, and metadata around an element of interest.Combined, the metainformation goes a long way towards establishing the full semantics for (the meaning of and context around) a system's elements.We take a three-pronged approach to providing metainformation on a grand scale.First, we provide a systematic methodology for systems analysts to determine the relationships around elements of interest in their information domains-Relationship Analysis.Relationship Analysis will result in a comprehensive set of a domain's structural relationships.Second, we provide a Metainformation Engine, which automatically generates sets of structural and content-based relationships around elements of interest as links, as well as metadata within static and virtual documents.Third, we provide an infrastructure for widespread link-based services within both static and virtual documents.This approach provides the inspiration as well as a sound foundation for a ubiquitous embracing of the WYWWYWI principle in the everyday systems people use, both on the Web and beyond.