This chapter describes prior and ongoing work that is related to the transmission and viewing of digital documents. In recent years, the use of digital documents has started to become practical. With high bandwidth networks and a proliferation of workstations that are able to view digital documents, research into both delivery and viewing of digital documents has increased dramatically. However, virtually all of this work is focused on directly mapping current definitions of documents into the digital domain.
Most systems are only concerned with replacing traditional paper objects with an electronic version.
Most document delivery systems are concerned with transmitting a single version of a document to a remote location, to either replace or supplement a paper copy. Most digital document systems are focussed on optimizing different parts of the browsing process in order to simulate reading a traditional paper document. With the exception of System 33, one of several described below, none of these systems has really attempted to use new paradigms that digital documents can now embrace, such as removing the semantic content of a document from its representation. 2.2 Document Delivery Systems Electronic document delivery systems are systems that are designed to transfer electronic versions of documents from one computer to another. However, most systems simply attempt to replace the delivery of paper documents with electronic versions, instead of using any expanded notion of what documents are.