Alan Dix - research topics

Versions in CSCW and HCI

The main focus of this work has been on the use of versions in CSCW systems with Tom Rodden and Ian Sommerville of Lancaster University. This built upon Lancaster's long experience in both CSCW and Software Engineering and on my own previous work on the use of versions to enable disconnected working and on dynamic pointers as a semantic and conceptual framework.

There are also links with the study of history and undo in single and multi-user systems.

Some of my online papers:

• A. Dix, T. Rodden and I. Sommerville (1996).
  A Modal Model of Versions.
  FAHCI - Formal Aspects of the Human Computer Interface. Sheffield, Springer Verlag.
  abstract
• A. Dix, R. Mancini and S. Levialdi (1997).
  Communication, action and history.
  Proceedings of CHI'97. Atlanta, USA, ACM Press.
  full paper
• A. Kirby, P. Rayson, T. Rodden, I. Sommerville and A. Dix (1997).
  Versioning the Web.
  7th International Workshop on Software Configuration Management, Ed. R. Conradi. Boston, USA, pp. 163-173.
  abstract || full paper (PDF, 66K)
  (also available as CSEG/21/96 from Computing Department, Lancaster University - see my 1996 list)
• A. Dix, T. Rodden and I. Sommerville (1997).
  Modelling Versions in Collaborative Work.
  IEE Proceedings in Software Engineering. 144(4) pp. 195-205
  abstract || full paper (compressed postscript, 352K) || full paper (PDF, 88K)
• A. J. Dix and V. C. Miles (1992).
  Version control for asynchronous group work.
  YCS 181, Department of Computer Science, University of York, (Poster presentation HCI'92: People and Computers VII).
  abstract || full paper (compressed postscript, 108K) || full paper (PDF, 127K)

Related papers in the CSCW literature

• C. Neuwirth, R. Chandhok, D. Kaufer, P. Erion, J. Morris and D. Miller (1992). Flexible Diff-ing in a collaborative writing system. Proceedings of CSCW'92. Toronto Canada, pp. 147-154, ACM Press. in ACM Digital Library
• J. Munson and P. Dewan (1994). A flexible object merging framework. Proceedings of CSCW'94. Chapel Hill, USA. pp.231-242, ACM Press. in ACM Digital Library
• Beaudouin-Lafon, M. (1990). Collaborative development of software, in Multi-User Interfaces and Applications, S. Gibbs and A. Verrijn-Stuart, Editors. Elsevier Science Publishers:
• Garg, P.K. and W. Scacchi (1990). A Hypertext System to Maintain Software Life-cycle Documents. IEEE Software. 7(3): p. 90-98.
• Haake, A. and J.M. Haake. (1993). Take CoVer: Exploiting Version Support in Cooperative Systems. in Proc. Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems (INTERCHIÔ93). Amsterdam: ACM Press. p. 406-413.
• Pendergast, M. and M. Beranek. (1991). Coordination and control for collaborative workstation design. in Diaper, D. and Hammond, N., editors, People and Computers VI - Proceedings of the HCI '91 Conference, pp. 157-167. British Computer Conference Series, Cambridge University Press
• Witten, I. H., Thimbleby, H. W., Coulouris, G., and Greenberg, S. (1991). Liveware: a new approach to sharing data in social networks. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 34:337-348.

Versions on the web

• Appelt, W. (1996). CoopWWW - Interoperable Tools for Cooperation Support using the World-Wide Web. in Proc. ERCIM Workshop "CSCW and the Web". Sankt Augustin, Germany: Arbeitspapiere der GMD 984, GMD/FIT. p. 91-94.
• Reuter, J., S.U. HŠn§gen, J.J. Hunt, and W.F. Tichy (1996). Distributed Revision Control via the World Wide Web. in 6th Int. Workshop on Software Configuration Management. Berlin: Springer. p. 166-174.
• Vitali, F. and D.G. Durand (1995). Using versioning to support collaboration on the WWW. in Fourth World Wide Web Conference. Electronic publication at http://www.w3.org/pub/Conferences/WWW4/Papers/190/

Traditional programming version control

• Reps, T., S. Horowitz, and J. Prints (1988). Support for integrating program variants in an environment for programming in the large. in Proc. 1st Int. Workshop on Software Configuration Management. Grassau: ACM Press. p. 197-216.
• Rochkind, M.J. (1975). The Source Code Control System. IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering. SE-1(4): p. 255-265.
• Sachweh, S. and W. SchŠfer (1995). Version management for tightly integrated software engineering environments. in Proc. 7th Int. Conf. on Software Engineering Environments. IEEE Computer Society Press. p. 21-31.
• Tichy, W.F. (1985). RCS -a system for version control. Software Practice and Experience. 15(7): p. 637-654.
• Bernard, Y. and P. Lavency (1989). A Process Oriented Approach to Configuration Management. in Proc. 11th Int. Conf on Software Engineering. IEEE Press. p. 320-330.
• Lacroix, M., D. Roelants, and J.E. Waroquier (1991). Flexible Support for Cooperation in Software Development. in Proc. 3rd Int. Workshop on Software Configuration Management. Trondheim: Springer-Verlag.
• Lie, A., R. Conradi, T.M. Didriksen, and E.-A. Karlsson (1989). Change-oriented Versioning in a Software Engineering Database. in Proc. 2nd Int. Workshop on Software Configuration Management. Princeton, N.J.: ACM Press. p. 56-65.