One aspect of Groupware of particular interest here is support of collabortion in authoring. The technology should support, not control collaboration[37]. ``Computer systems to support the writing process will be of most help if they fit the writer's perception of the task and assist whichever strategy the writer chooses to adopt''[48]. Focusing on single writing activities will lead to a collaborative system that is inappropriate for the task[53]. Mandviwalla and Olfman[45] view group support in terms of people, environment, and task. Ellis, Gibbs, and Rein[15] see support for group interaction including communication, collaboration, coordination. Dillon[1] identifies the need for better communication mechanisms. Ede and Lunsford[39] note that in creating a document, coordination is critical. Fish[63] suggests social roles, such as primary author, commenter, and reader, to assist individual collaborators in reducing coordination problems. Support for cognitive aspects of collaborative writing include both individual and group authoring activities. Another group activity is the formation of sub-groups. Support for sub-groups may include sub-group only access, authoring, and communication privileges.
Software must support a range of writing strategies[50,8,60]. In general, the system designer needs to provide an appropriate view of documents[38] and also provides facilities to directly modify or alter the text. Neuwirth et al.[10] identify several issues related to asynchronous collaborative authoring. Commenting is a major activity for communication within authoring groups and between readers and such groups. Collaboration supports include social interaction support among co-authors and commenters, and cognitive support for co-authoring and external commenting. This implies the ability to identify commentor or revisors. This concept also relates to generations of the same documents and management of previous versions. Related concerns are: storage requirements, labeling conventions, guidelines for what is worth maintaining. Multiple items of interest should be viewable simultaneously. For example, a writer may need to view his/her portion of the text, the guidelines identified by the group, a sample format of a similar document, and another writer's comments. This would facilitate the communication of goals as well as the management of some constraints in writing process. Computer support should also reduce cognitive load of authoring and collaboration activities. These concerns should been addressed in collaborative authoring systems. Appendix C: Collaborative Authoring and Technical Writing provides details on collaborative authoring.