Reviews

Reviews by Philip Barker, University of
Teesside

In the future, ALT-J's policy will be to offer
books and other products for review to
members of ALT or appropriate external
experts. For this first issue of the journal,
however, Philip Barker (Associate Editor in
charge of reviews) has taken most of the
burden on himself.

A trilogy of books on CD-I

Compact Disc Interactive (CD-I) is a new
electronic publishing medium for multimedia
information. Unlike conventional publishing
media such as paper and film, CD-I provides
an interactive method of accessing stored
information and controlling its subsequent
display on a TV screen. CD-I revolutionizes
the publishing of all sorts of material such as
music, text, images, computer graphics, film
and video. It also adds many capabilities not
possible with traditional publication media.
Until recently, however, the only widely
available textbook on CD-I was Preston's
Compact Disc-Interactive: A Designer's
Overview, published in 1988 by Kluwer
Technical Books. Now, with the recent
release of CD-I in Europe, three new books
on the technology have become available.
They form part of The CD-I Series produced
by Philips Interactive Media Systems (UK)
and published by the Addison-Wesley. All
three have 1992 imprints.

Introducing CD-I (ISBN: 0-201-627-48-5)

Given its non-technical approach, this book
is ideally suited to newcomers to CD-I
technology. It is aimed at a broad audience
from interactive producers and designers to

all those who might be interested in the
applications of CD-I as a communication and
entertainment medium. The aim of the book
is to provide an overview of CD-I and how
this new standard for electronic publishing is
likely to influence information provision and
access in offices, schools, universities and
home environments. The book is organized
into four basic sections, plus a case study and
a glossary.

The first section deals primarily with some of
the many potential uses of CD-I in a number
of different contexts ranging from training,
education and entertainment to corporate
presentations and information provision for
point-of-sale applications. This section also
explains the basic nature of interactivity and
how CD-I relates to interactive television.

In the second section, the multimedia nature
of CD-I is the focus: the medium allows text,
sound, static pictures, animations and motion
video to be incorporated and integrated into
an interactive presentation. Two of the most
important features of CD-I are also emphas-
ized here: the digital nature of each of the
constituent media components, and the exis-
tence of a universal world standard (the
Green Book) for CD-I publication and deli-
very platforms. The limitations of the finite
capacity (650 megabytes) of a CD-I disc are
discussed, and different ways of using the
available storage are then outlined.

The third section covers the basic steps
involved in designing a CD-I product. Each
aspect of the design process, from product
conception through to design specification, is
introduced and described. Producing a CD-I
title usually requires a multi-disciplinary
team with a range of different design and

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ALTJ VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1

development skills, and this section con-
cludes with a discussion of the importance of
teamwork and project management.

The fourth section describes how a design
specification is taken through the various
phases of development to final production.
Topics discussed in this section include
copyright issues, authoring materials, produc-
tion libraries, disc building, and develop-
ment-team structure and responsibilities.

The case study presented at the end of the
book takes the reader through the steps
involved in creating an actual CD-I publica-
tion {Great British Golf). It describes the
roles of the different people involved in
making the disc, its basic structure and
content, and all the individual development
and production processes (authoring, testing,
mastering, and so on) needed to bring a
commercial product to the market.

The book provides a very readable introduc-
tion to CD-I and its applications for those
who are still uninitiated into the technology.
Like the other two book in this series
reviewed here, it is produced to a high
standard (apart from one or two minor
typographical errors) and is copiously illus-
trated.

The CD-I Design Handbook (ISBN: 0-
201-627-49-3)

Designing products for delivery on CD-I is in
many ways different from designing for other
publishing media. This design handbook
therefore deals with a range of issues relating
specifically to the CD-I design process -
from initial concept through to the beginning
of production. It is aimed at designers who
need to understand what they can do with
CD-I technology rather than the detailed
technical aspects of how CD-I works.

There are ten chapters, an appendix, a
reading list, a glossary and an index. The ten
chapters are organized into three broad theme
areas covering general introductory issues,

technical perspectives, and detailed design
considerations. None of the issues associated
with asset or disc production is considered
since these form the topic of a companion
book (The CD-I Production Handbook - see
below).

General introductory issues are dealt with in
the first three chapters. The topics presented
include an introduction to the features,
facilities and potential of CD-I, a description
of CD-I as an information storage and
delivery medium, and a detailed exposition
on how to design for interactivity.

The technical perspectives (chapters 4 to 7)
provide a more detailed description of the
nature of CD-I's interactive interface, the use
of video, image formats and image compres-
sion. This section also contains an outline of
the various audio formats available, and
gives examples of the different ways of using
them. The section ends with more details
about the overall CD-I delivery system, and
how it works.

The final section of the book (chapters 8 to
10) deals with various issues relating to the
design stages involved in producing a CD-I
title. The topics covered include a detailed
description of the design process, design
analysis, prototyping, copyright and legal
issues, teamwork and management techni-
ques such as developing the production plan,
production scheduling, and budgeting.

Although the further reading section is rather
sparse (containing only six references) both
the appendix and the glossary are very
useful. The appendix, for example, provides
a valuable ready reckoner which enables
designers to check that their design will fit
within the storage and bandwidth require-
ments of CD-I.

The CD-I Production Handbook (ISBN:
0-201-627-50-7)

This book is intended as a sequel to the
Design Handbook reviewed above. It is

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Reviews

aimed at those working on the production of
CD-I titles (whatever their level of involve-
ment) and those who are interested in
commissioning CD-I material but are not
sure about what to expect.

There are eleven chapters, logically arranged
into five theme areas: the pre-production
phase of a project (chapters 1 to 3), CD-I
facilities (4 and 5), gathering and producing
CD-I resources (6 to 9), disc building (10),
and follow-on projects (11). The reading list
and glossary are essentially the same as those
of the CD-I Design Handbook.

The three chapters that make up the section
dealing with the pre-production phase are of
an introductory nature and are concerned
with the infra-structure that must be created
in order to undertake successful CD-I deve-
lopment. The first chapter covers issues such
as the relationship between the producer and
the client of a product, a description of the
production process itself, and tools for CD-I
production. The second chapter describes in
detail the steps involved in setting up a CD-I
studio and equipping it, and the nature of the
hardware, software and human resources
required. The final chapter in this section
deals with project management issues such as
setting up milestones, defining deliverables,
scheduling, elapsed time, budgeting and
copyright.

The first chapter of the second section
provides detailed descriptions of CD-I tech-
nology including the nature of the CD-ROMs
on which interactive materials are published.
There are descriptions of the parts of the
CD-I player, the structure of discs (tracks and
sectors), seek time, channels and data rate.
Synchronization, interleaving and real-time
operation are also discussed. The second
chapter in this section deals with CD-I
effects. Beginning with a discussion of
picture planes and image types (such as
FMV, RGB, DYUV, CLUT, etc.) it proceeds

to a description of broadcasting conventions,
resolution and aspect ratios. Subscreens,
partial updates and CLUT animation are then
outlined, and there are descriptions of the
various types of video plane effects such as
cuts, wipes, fades, dissolves and mosaics.
This section concludes with a short descrip-
tion of audio types and the use of sound-
maps.

The largest section of the book is the third,
and it deals with the theme of gathering and
producing CD-I resources. The first chapter
of the section covers four important issues:
the coding methods underlying the storage of
materials in digital form on CD-I discs, how
to generate the right sort of materials from
scratch, how to convert existing materials
from non-CD-I format, and how to manipu-
late and edit materials at different levels of
authoring sophistication. The next two chap-
ters deal with authoring and the creation of
prototypes, authoring software such as
MediaMogul, and choosing an authoring
system. The section concludes with a particu-
larly informative description of program-
ming, concentrating on Philips's CD-I
Author (a programming environment for
developing CD-I titles), the IMS Program-
mer's Toolkit, the Balboa Runtime Environ-
ment, CD-RTOS and the OS-9 real-time
multitasking operating system.

Chapter 10 (which makes up the fourth
section of the book) covers the disc-building
to disc-pressing stages of CD-I production.
Consideration is given to a number of
important issues such as the structure and
creation of real-time files and the generation
of CD-I disc images for testing purposes.
There is then a discussion of the role of
emulation (and how it works), followed by a
description of WORM discs and how they
can be used for testing and validation. The
final part of this section is concerned with
the processes that take place at the CD-I
production plant when the WORM or tape

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ALT-J VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1

streamer is used to create a master which is
then used for replication purposes.

The last section of the book consists of a
single short chapter covering the various
factors to be taken into account in anticipa-
tion of follow-up projects. It discusses issues
such as creating sequels, house style and
software efficiency through the design of
re-usable code segments.

This book really does contain lots of useful
information for those wishing to find out
more about CD-I production: of the three
books in the series reviewed here, I found it
the most interesting and instructive.

At present there are four planned books in
the series - at the time of writing The CD-I
Programmer's Handbook has not been
released but is scheduled for publication later
this year. Undoubtedly, as CD-I takes off
there will be scope for extending the series,
perhaps with titles such as CD-I in the
Classroom or CD-I and Higher Education.

The Hutchinson Electronic Encyclopedia,
First Electronic Version, Oxford, Random
Century and Attica Cybernetics, 1991.
ISBN: 1-873472-00-5. Price £99.

Attaching a CD player to a personal com-
puter is now a relatively simple process. So,
as the cost of such players falls, the use of
CD-ROM for distributing large volumes of
computer-based multimedia information
becomes increasingly attractive, and elec-
tronic encyclopedias based on CD-ROM are
now becoming popular. Compton's Multime-
dia Encyclopedia and the Grolier Electronic
Encyclopedia are two examples of this new
type of information resource; the Hutchinson
Electronic Encyclopedia is another.

The package consists of a standard ISO 9660
CD-ROM, a printed manual, and floppy
disks (3.5 and 5.25 inch) containing the

installation software. Installation is relatively
easy, taking only a few minutes. The system
runs within Microsoft Windows.

On start-up you are presented with a Con-
tents Page designed to give easy access to the
various categories of information available.
The Contents Page is framed within a
standard Windows setting of a horizontal
menu bar, scroll bars, dialogue boxes and
reactive buttons. It is organized into three
major areas: an eight-option iconic menu
area, a window for the display of title and
word indexes, and a horizontal array of 13
icons.

The information within the encyclopedia is
organized in the form of 'articles', each
consisting of just one 'page* of information,
so pages are of varying length. There are
25,147 articles listed in the General Index,
and they are sub-divided into seven basic
subject categories: Places (5,040), Science
and Technology (3,378), History. (1,937),
Biographies (6,068), Aspects of Society
(4,279), Life Sciences (3,396) and The Arts
(1,049). A particular information category is
made the current one by clicking on the
screen area associated with it, and once one
of the categories has been selected it can be
browsed through or searched.

The icons in the icon array enable you to
access the Contents Page from anywhere in
the encyclopedia, display any page, examine
the next and previous pages, perform word
searches, examine the next and previous
records retrieved by a search operation,
create a backtrack list and actually backtrack,
access a Notepad facility, print out informa-
tion in hard copy, and obtain online help. All
these facilities are of course augmented by
those provided in the standard Windows
environment.

There are two basic ways of retrieving
information. The first involves directly
accessing articles using one of the two

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Reviews

alphabetical indexes (Title and Word). The
second method is based on full-text retrieval
mechanisms using either a simple or complex
keyword search facility. For a simple search
strategy, you type in a string of characters
that defines a descriptor representing your
information requirement. All the articles
indexed under this descriptor are then made
available for display. If too many articles are
retrieved, the search can be refined in order
to reduce the number of hits. For example, a
search for computer retrieves 220 articles;
refining the search by also specifying digital
reduces the number of hits to 20. Complex
searches are similar to simple searches except
that up to nine keywords can be used
simultaneously, each one linked to another
by means of a logical operator (AND, OR,
NOT). Examples of complex searches are:
comput* AND Babbage AND Turing
(retrieves one article on the history of
computing); and computer AND digital AND
NOT optical (retrieves 18 articles about
computers). Unfortunately, many of the com-
plex queries I tried resulted in that dreaded
Windows message: 'UNRECOVERABLE
APPLICATION ERROR - Terminating Cur-
rent Application'.

That, however, is not my only complaint
about this product. It performs too slowly,
there are other bugs and errors, and the
user-interface is of poor quality. I was also
very disappointed by the quality of the
printed manual. This is scanty with respect to
both size and content. Worse, it fails to
reflect accurately what happens on-screen
while the encyclopedia is being used.

The slowness of the system is apparent in
three important areas - initialization, search
time and retrieval time. In this context the
Grolier Encyclopedia outperforms it by a
long way. For example, once the Hutchinson
system has been activated by double clicking
on the Hutchinson icon, there is a wait of
about 95 seconds before everything is ready

to go. In comparison, Grolier - running on
the same machine (a Viglen 386) and using
the same Hitachi CD-ROM drive - takes less
than 12 seconds to get going. Grolier's
search and retrieval times are also much
faster: the Hutchinson search takes over 27
seconds to locate a mere 452 references to
the term 'Paris'; to perform the same search,
Grolier takes less than four seconds to locate
1,425 references.

Equally irritating are the bugs and inconsis-
tencies in the Hutchinson package. Examples
include colour smudging on the opening page
of the encyclopedia and in the photograph of
John Major (Biographies Section), angstrom
being spelled 'a3b3ngstrom' in both the word
index and in the article defining the term
'lumen' (in other places it is spelled cor-
rectly), picric acid being retrieved by the
string 'c6h2' and not by its correct molecular
formula C6H3N3O7 (which retrieves 'pyro-
gallol'), and entries in the title index appear-
ing to be correctly capitalized whereas those
in the word index are all in lower case -
something which makes chemical formulae
and abbreviations appear unfamiliar.

There are many other such little mistakes, but
one of the most unforgivable limitations of
the package is the lack of error checking in
the underlying control software. For example,
I started up Hutchinson having inadvertently
left my Grolier disc in the CD-ROM drive.
The control software gave me no indication
that I had an incorrect disc present and it
took me a good while to determine why I
could not get Hutchinson to work. In
comparison, Grolier checks for the presence
of the correct disc in the CD-ROM drive and
issues a warning if it is not there.

In all, then, I hardly feel I can recommend
Hutchinson to anyone who requires fast and
accurate access to encyclopedic information
when at least one better alternative is
available.

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ALTJ VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1

Rewritable Optical Storage Technology,
edited by J. Paris Roth, Meckler, West-
port CT, USA, 1991. ISBN: 0-88736-
534-5.

Because of its reliability, robustness and high
storage capacity, read-only optical storage
technology has become an important and
well-established component of interactive-
multimedia systems. Although potentially as
important, rewritable optical storage is not as
well-established, but its use is growing. This
book, produced by a group of authors,
provides an introduction to the development
and application of this relatively new
approach to data and information storage and
retrieval.

There are seven chapters. The first provides
an overview of rewritable optical storage
technologies: magneto-optical (MO), dye-
polymer, and phase-change. The merits and
current de-merits of the most popular of
these technologies - MO - are then described
and a number of commercial products are
compared. The need for inter-changeability
and standards is discussed, and the chapter
concludes with an annotated list of over 170
names and addresses of organisations cur-
rently undertaking active research into the
development and/or application of rewritable
optical storage technology. The second chap-
ter describes how MO storage works and the
advantages of this type of technology for
storage-intensive applications such as CAD
(Computer-Aided Design) and CAE (Com-
puter-Aided Engineering). The benefits and
uses of MO rewritable, WORM and CD-
ROM storage technologies are then com-
pared, and the chapter ends with a descrip-
tion of a multifunction (hybrid) optical disc
drive that could prove an attractive develop-
ment for future computer systems.

Following the hardware descriptions given in
the early part of the book, Chapter 3 deals
with some of the important software conside-

rations relevant to rewritable and multifunc-
tional optical drives. Issues covered include
the software requirements for WORM and
rewritable media, the need for a universal
logical file format for rewritable media, and
the Small Computer Systems Interface
(SCSI). Chapter 4 describes the development
of a new flexible rewritable storage techno-
logy suitable for use in tape and disc drives.
The technology is based on the use of dyed
polymer films for information storage, and a
web-coating process for fabrication. The
attractiveness of this latter process (compared
with stamping processes) is that it can lead to
substantial reductions in production costs.

The last three chapters of the book deal with
applications. Chapter 5 covers the end-user
requirements for networking an integrated
rewritable optical disc workstation in order to
support communication, storage and writing
activities within a professional workgroup.
Similarly, the author of Chapter 6 outlines
the requirements of a workstation to support
foreign-language instruction and how rewri-
table optical media could provide many of
the required facilities. The final chapter deals
with 'surrogate manipulations',, describing
how a high-speed workstation fitted with a
rewritable optical disc could be used to
provide a multimedia workstation for the
creation and storage of contemporary art
material using images, text and sound.

As well as a subject index, the book contains
two appendices: a list of recommended
readings relating to rewritable optical
storage, and a glossary of terms and acro-
nyms.

The style and quality of the presentations
varies from chapter to chapter. There are also
a number of spelling mistakes and some
important omissions. But the book is in
general quite interesting, and will undoub-
tedly serve as a useful introduction for those
wishing to find out more about the current

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Reviews

state of the art in the area of rewritable
optical storage and its applications.

Hypertext: State of the Art, edited by R.
McAleese and C. Green, Oxford, Intellect,
1990. ISBN 1-871516-08-0.

There has been growing interest over the last
few years in hypertext and hypermedia, and a
large number of commercial products have
become available. These have included appli-
cations which deliver hypermedia informa-
tion (for example, electronic books based on
CD-ROM), and hypermedia creation software
(for example, authoring systems). This grow-
ing interest has developed from academic
research which started back in the 1940s with
Vannevar Bush and his memex concept.
More recently, a great deal of research has
been conducted into hypertext and hyperme-
dia, and the book reviewed here aims to
disseminate some of the findings of this
research.

It consists of 29 papers selected from those
submitted to the 2nd UK Human Interface
Interactive Learning Systems SIG conference
on hypertext held in 1989 at the University
of York. The principle keynote speaker was
Ted Nelson, and although his speeches are
not included in this book, a brief description
of his contributions is provided in the
preface.

The papers are divided into four basic
sections: Navigation and Browsing, Hyper-
text and Learning, Prototypes, and Designing
Hypertext and Hypertext and Design, each
preceded by a short description of underlying
issues.

The first section, consisting of nine papers,
addresses topics such as the use of meta-
phors, the effects that the underlying struc-
ture can have on navigation tools, and the

relationship between navigational aids and
control structures. Section 2 contains seven
papers covering the use of hypertext and
hypermedia within learning applications. The
reader is led to consider concepts such as
learning styles, the degree of learner control,
user models, and designing for precise
learning outcomes. Section 3 also has seven
papers and deals with concepts associated
with the creation of hypermedia applications.

. A number of languages and environments are
discussed (for example, HyperCard and Pro-
log) along with software maintenance and
document processing. The last section has six
papers, all dealing with design issues. Two
basic approaches emerge: a top-down
approach, concentrating on the way know-
ledge or information should be represented,
and a bottom-up approach concentrating on
the system and user requirements.

In addition to the theoretical treatment of the
concepts and ideas relevant to hypertext and
hypermedia, the papers presented in this
book also generally provide the results of
experimental work, allowing some quantifi-
cation of the ideas discussed so that a clearer
picture of the actual impact of a variety of
hypermedia features can be assessed.

This is not an introductory book. It is aimed
at people who already have some knowledge
of both hypertext and research techniques. It
offers no overall conclusions, and it has the
feel of conference proceedings rather than
that of a textbook. Nevertheless, the papers
are of high quality, and the range of topics
discussed makes this an extremely useful text
for undergraduates, industry professionals,
and anyone conducting research and/or deve-
lopment of hypermedia applications.

A hypertext version of a previous book
edited by Ray McAleese, Hypertext: Theory
into Practice (Oxford, Intellect, 1988) is
provided free as a Guide Envelope applica-
tion for the Apple Macintosh.

Stephen Richards, University of Teesside

78