Collaborative Version Control in an Agent-based Hypertext Environment

In this work we discuss a number of issues for the design of hypertext systems in an agent-based model of computation. We examine how the “traditional” fundamental concepts which are at the basis of the design of hypertexts can be re-visited under a new perspective of collaborative expert agents. The paper presents how some principles of high-level concurrent programming are applied as new methodologies for the design and development of complex software, such as hypertext systems. By adopting an agent-based framework, we gain powerful control on version management that presents considerable difficulties for the development of hypertext systems; a general distributed version control mechanism is applied, without significant differences, both in single-user and in collaborative multiuser mode. In both cases, the underlying hypertext architecture is defined in terms of computational agents interacting each other in order to accomplish common goals. In this paper we present a first-level prototype implemented in a concurrent object-oriented language, realized on the top of the Common Lisp Object System.