The goal of the CASCADE document viewing area is to provide an environment within which a group of people can engage each other related to the document component. One of the important ways in which this happens is through comments. The anchors are represented as buttons. These anchor buttons normally contain the name of the author of the document component to which the anchor is linked. To go to that document component, the user simply clicks on the button.
Similarly, as authorized persons are viewing any document components, they might want to edit the document. By selecting the edit document choice from the document menu, the document viewing window is replaced with a document editor window. It is important to note that at the current time the edit windows for CASCADE are provided by using the functionality of the Motif text widgets. It is anticipated that released versions of CASCADE will employ CORBA-based approaches that will allow the editing function to be provided by the user's preferred editor on the platform of choice. For that reason, little effort is currently devoted to providing any sophisticated editing functionality.
Beyond editing, users might want to make a comment on a document. The CASCADE prototype has endeavored to demonstrate how efficient this process might be made. Adding a comment to a document in CASCADE is simply a matter of clicking the mouse at the point the comment should be inserted and making a comment. As mentioned in Introduction, as an example of ``augmentation'', the system takes care of all the remaining systems administration tasks.
Finally, when one is looking at a document or a component of a document, it is sometimes important to know who else has looked at it, edited it, or commented on it. Eventually CASCADE should be able to provide information about a user or group profile (e .g., who has been active, where is the most activity focused, and what are the typical actions of a user.) This information can be used for a range of tasks such as finding document ``hot spots'' or assisting an inexperienced user. While the functionality is still under development, it provides an indication of project direction. The system logs each comment or document modification, and it tracks minor activities such as mouse clicks or other movements within a document (refer to Section 6 for a complete explanation of logging and tracking). The system also logs user access to CASCADE, but that log is currently only used for internal accounting. The system can also check on the login status of group members.