Active Alice: Using Real Paper to Interact with Electronic Text

Many documents exist in both paper and electronic forms. Paper has many well-known advantages, but electronic texts often contain useful information that is not easily accessible from printed paper versions. SGML texts, in particular, are rich sources of additional information. The Active Alice project shows how a reader can use a paper document to access information from its corresponding electronic version without having to manipulate the electronic version via a separate computer interface.

The project makes use of a DigitalDesk. This is an ordinary desk augmented with a video camera and computer-driven projector. The camera captures images of the pages on the desk and detects simple user actions such as pointing to specific words on a page. The images are used to associate the pages with their SGML counterparts. Information from the SGML versions can then be conveyed directly to the reader via information projected onto the page or onto other areas of the desk.

The project takes its name from the example text used—a version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.