Radu Luchian(ov): Current Projects:

About MonDoc

This is a presentation of MonDoc embedded in an early version of MoStaCon (see below). That version was the basis of the first formal study I ran for testing the usability of both applications. Since MonDoc is simply a set of priciples, which I hope are applicable for a wide array of purposes (), I had to implement it in an application. At the time of the implementation, I was working as research assistant in the Psycholinguistics Lab of the New Bulgarian University (Sofia, BG), so I chose an application which suited my work there. As it turned out, both projects turned out to be very large, so until now, almost a year later, I still have only alpha versions of both of them. So I keep updating them - so simple to do under MonDoc. If you just want to see the presentation of the study I made, click on: start the presentation.
Otherwise, read on :)
Note: if you click twice on any of the tabs above (Console, FAQ, Downloads, Version, Legalese), it will collapse the text; to see it again, click again on any tab.

About MoStaCon

[feature list]

If you're interested in using MoStaCon or developing around it, you may subscribe to my support list. There you can ask questions, check FAQ files, etc.

Have you ever run an experiment? Any sort of experiment, something in which you gather data on the behavior of some system in order to build a theory or check the validity of an existing one. If you have, you must have reached a moment when you had to do something to the data which involved tedious and repetitive operations: coding, recoding, sorting, sampling, filtering, swapping variables, modifying values, etc. Most of the time some assistant (student and/or employee) winds up doing the 'dirty work'.

That's when MoStaCon can help. It allows you to summarize in a formal way the operations you have to perform on the data, then it takes your raw data and does those operations quickly and without the error involved in human handling. If the paradigm under which you're researching is already programmed into MoStaCon, the system walks you through the process of designing your experiment, formatting the data, calculating statistics and it warns you of data entry or design errors or of attempts to use wrong data types; it even answers your final experimental questions. Currently, I implemented paradigms I met while studying Cognitive Science (that's where the name COGS MoStaCon comes from), and I am optimizing the MOnitor for use in the Experimental Lab of the Center for Cognitive Science at the New Bulgarian University.

System Architecture

The architecture of the system is layered: with the interface (the MOnitor), you:

learn about your task,

gather necessary information, and prepare filters for data analysis, all in Web browser windows;

run the created filters on any perl interpreter;

the interface continues to help you prepare your presentation and store the resulting data.

The MOnitor is an application of MonDoc, another project of mine which simplifies hypertext document creation and presentation.

Every layer is modular, so if you don't find the description, procedure or the filter you need, you can ask a programmer who knows perl and/or javaScript to add it, or you can send me a message explaining what you need, and if I have the time, I may implement it myself. In case you extend the system, it would be nice to send me a copy of the extension so I can put it here for everyone's use.

If you find something that doesn't work as it is supposed to, please drop me a line (e-mail radu@monicsoft.net.)

Main feature: reusability

(code once, use forever): The main goal for which I designed MoStaCon and the first level of its underlying architecture (MonDoc, StaCon) was to reduce and automate repeated work. Research involves lots of iterations of the same procedure, sometimes in recursive manner. Once these processes spelled out and organized, you may find errors, omissions or redundant operations which add tremendously to research time. MoStaCon helps eliminate these and gives you a tool to speed up training of lab assistants.

COGS MoStaCon features-at-a-glance

experiment design tutorial for the fields summed under Cognitive Science

quick experiment design sidekick (keeps track of information)

text-based data formating

transparent basic and medium-level statistics

built-in debugging mechanisms

FREE for everyone to use

MonDoc features-at-a-glance

a whole web area in one file (less disk clutter, less slack)

removes large amounts of processing load from the server and puts it at the client side, where it belongs

the best SECURITY you can have (provided by your browser)

hassle-free DHTML editing (for beginners, medium and advanced users, with built-in tag library editor)

pop-up glossary definitions and reference details

context preservation with consistent page structure

use replacement bits to avoid retyping same thing several times, organize the document and save disk space

context-dependent help, integrated in the document

easy document modification

FREE for everyone to use

Trade-offs

In exchange for all these features, MoStaCon inherits the tradeoffs made by MonDoc.
You will:

have to work only with Internet Explorer v5 or better (for now, during development; later on I'll try to add support for other browsers)

have to use the Flash4 plugin (install it, if you don't have it yet; this is more of a positive feature :)

lose some portability (not every browser supports JavaScript 1.3 and plugins)

wait slightly longer for a document to load (but you will not be interrupted while using it; the actual gain in time for readers of MonDoc documents is substantial)

have to visibly acknowledge MonDoc in the documents you create with it.

have to visibly acknowledge MoStaCon in any research for which you use it.
Note: the Flash4 plugin is a small piece of software written and distributed by Macromedia, Inc., which allows a plugin-compatible (or Java-enhanced) browser to display animations created in Macromedia Flash.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are questions I was asked a lot during beta-testing.

Q. How do I start this thing?
A. Go to the Console and press Start the MOnitor :).

Q. How do I learn how to use MoStaCon?
A. The system is designed to be as accessible as possible, and it contains its own tutorial. Please read the tutorial before jumping in to design an experiment. If something seems counterintuitive to you or you would like some neat feature included, please tell me about it.

Q. Why does MoStaCon slow down sometimes?
A. It doesn't happen only to MoStaCon. When too many windows are open, or applications like MSWord or Photoshop take up lots of memory, Windows is using the hard disk (several tens of times slower than RAM). MoStaCon doesn't write anything to the hard disk. If you hear disk activity when it slows down, try closing some windows, or get some RAM installed in the computer. A faster processor or motherboard might help too.

Q. Does MoStaCon run on Macintoshes or Unix machines?
A. MoStaCon is planned and written to be as portable as possible. It will run on any machine and operating system which has installed Internet Explorer 5 or higher and perl5 or higher. It may even work with lower versions than the specified ones, but not on all platforms. If it doesn't run on your machine, tell me what you're doing in a message.

Q. Do I need to download software, or can I use it straight from the the web?
A. If you are using only the tutorial, the surest way is to bookmark this web page, because I'm planning to update the MOnitor quite often. But if you want to use the data formating and statistics library, you will have to download at least the small perl core and install it.

Q. How much does MoStaCon cost?
A. MoStaCon is free, it is a research project of Radu Luchianov at the Cognitive Science Center of the New Bulgarian University. If you use it or are interested in its development, I suggest you subscribe to the MonDoc distribution list. However, if you want answers to specific questions, or you want me to develop a MonDoc document on a specific topic, you should see my Making Money page :)

Detailed description

If you're interested in background information, you may download my Master's Thesis in Cognitive Science. It contains:

a review of the literature I could find on cognitive problems and solutions within the field of Human-Computer Interfaces relevant to experiment design;

a detailed description of MoStaCon's interface and features;

usability experiments I ran to test MoStaCon's interface and to beta-test the system itself.
[PDF file (902k)] [RTF file (2.3M)] [MonDoc file (200k)] [Text source (23k)], last update: 11Aug2000

In order to use only the MOnitor

All you need is to

download this zipped version (236k, last update 29Jun2000),

extract from the archive anywhere on your disk (fits on a floppy too :);

open the file index.html with Internet Explorer 5 (most features work even in IE versions as low as 4)

enjoy the tutorial

If you want to use StaCon data-processing filters

You will need to have a version of perl installed. If you don't, follow this steps to install (no, it's not as complicated as it sounds and you can do it in under 5 minutes.).
on DOS (Windows3.11,95,98,NT):

you can get from here a small zip archive (535k) containing the most basic core of the installation I'm using (I hope nobody will shout me down for redistributing it :);

save the archive in a directory like C:\Dos

right-click on it and choose WinZip:Extract to path C:\Dos\Smperl (If you're not using the great shareware Winzip, use whatever procedure you're normally using);

in that directory, click on the file PerlCRT.dll, press Ctrl-X, go to C:\Windows\System and press Ctrl-V

edit Autoexec.bat (look with Windows Explorer at the C:\ directory, right-click on Autoexec or Autoexec.bat and choose Edit);

press PageDown, End, Enter then type
SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Dos\Smperl

close Notepad and save Autoexec.bat

That's it!

if you want the complete perl installation, with documentation, server modules, etc., see below. But for the StaCon data filters, all you need
on another OS

for Windows, MacOS, XWindows, Solaris or any other operating system or hardware you may use, you can find detailed installation instructions on the Perl Site. (archive sizes between 4.2M to 9M)

Version Information (0.21alpha)

Currently, MoStaCon is still in alpha testing. My priorities are sorted like this:

working on the thesis paper,

fighting with pure programming (and ISS server) bugs,

correcting interface quirks,

expanding the decision-making (DM) graph,

preparing the usability experiment(s)
If I'm not ready with all this by the end of June, I'm in BIG trouble :(

Version 0.21alpha
Interface:

changed navigation to use classic push-buttons

expanded DM graph
Library:

nothing new

Version 0.20alpha
First test interface using an alternative navigation scheme (with radio buttons); was rejected by the first two beta-testers :( Bah! People are sooo refractary to new solutions :(. This version already contained:

complete MOnitor engine

self-documentation

a small DM graph

integrated StaCon (menu-based editor for perl data filters)
The library contained few modules:

initialization and

the report mechanism

constants and variables declaration

reading indexed, token-separated files

descriptive statistics (min, max, range, set, sum, sum2, median, avg, var, varp, sd, sdp)

simple list output

Version 0.15alpha
No interface, only a small library of routines slapped together from individual scripts.

Version 0.01-0.14
MoStaCon originated as a series of data formatting perl scripts I wrote for processing data for psychological and psycholinguistic experiments in the Center's Research lab.

Near-future Additions to MoStaCon

tutorial expansion

a pop-down menu for choosing previously mentioned reference sources (in the add reference module)

a goForward button, the complement of goBack (should be smart and suggest the most appropriate next page)

extended debugging tools added to the Console

the functions prefixed with # in StaCon

more explicit QuickHelp

automatic install for the perl core

integration with WARPe (MUD engine and editor) and MonEx (my on-line experiment creation tool)

Near-future Additions to MonDoc

anchor the console and document in frames

include self-editor (for replacement bits, glossary, pages, templates)

optimize (glossary set)/page generation (make only entries for the user-requested terms)

more expressive time counters (sec,min,hour[,day?])

search (to supplement the browser Find function)

clean up the spagetti and integrate some functions in the J[ava]Script object model

full compatibility with Netscape

add check for reserved words

support multiple page templates

separate styles for more platforms (MacOS, XWindows)

allow user to reduce or increase the font size (and to specify a font) without having to edit the styles file

allow the engine to switch seamlessly among MonDocuments

hash compression (optimized)

document statistics

document checksums

txt2rtf export filter

mon2txt export filter

txt2mon import filter

rtf2mon import filter

Planned MonDoc features

SubArctic interface (under consideration, as a port to Java)

Planned MonDoc documents

iMMedia - a Multimedia and Internet applications tutorial (the course I held for the EPS@AUBG team)

MoPres - a tutorial/helper for organizing and formating presentations (talks, letters, articles, books)

MoWeb - a tutorial/helper for Web site generation

WARPe - WebMUD server and client (multi-user dungeon engine for the Web)

MonEx - on-line experiment-design tool

Quotes DB - my database of memorable quotes from literature

Legal Notes

Legalese is the tricky language of the lawyers. In our 'advanced society', unless we are exceptionally careful we can become either subjects of legal thievery (hello, IBM and Microsoft!) or get charged with mistakes we never committed. So hear ye:

License Agreement

This license agreement covers your use of Radu Luchianov`s COGS MoStaCon, its source code and documentation, hereinafter referred to as "The Product". Throughout this License Agreement, "Monicsoft" and "The Author" refer to Radu Luchianov.

The Product is Copyright (c) 1998-2000 Monicsoft. You may use it and distribute it according to this following License Agreement. If you do not agree with these terms, please remove the Product from your system. By incorporating the Product in your work or distributing the Product to others you implicitly agree to these license terms.

This License Agreement covers the current version of The Product. The Author reserves the right to modify the terms of this License Agreement at any moment, and without prior notification, in future releases of The Product.

Statement of Copyright

The Product is, and remains, copyright 1998-2000 Monicsoft, with the exception of specific copyrights as noted in the individual source files.

General Conditions

The Product is provided as a compressed archive consisting of source files (the Product Sources) interpretable by specific Web browsers and on freeware perl5 interpreters, of custom image files and Flash animations.

You may freely use and distribute the Product so long as you provide the complete and unmodified original Product installation kit as supplied by Monicsoft.

Conditions of Use for Product Sources

If you further develop the Product, you must do one of these things to comply with the Product License Agreement:

Make your (resultant) product freely available according to a license similar to the GNU General Public License, or the Perl Artistic License, or this License Agreement, or

Add this phrase to the documentation for your product: "This product uses parts of the MonDoc and MoStaCon tools, Copyright (c) 1998-2000 Monicsoft (http://www.nbu.bg/cogs/personal/radu/proj/msc/pres.html)".

Rights of Usage

You may freely and at no cost use the Product in any project, commercial, academic, military, or private, so long as you respect the License Agreement. The License Agreement does not affect any software except the Product. In particular, any application that uses the Product does not itself fall under the License Agreement.

You may modify any part of the Product, including sources and documentation, except this License Agreement, which you may not modify. You must clearly indicate any modifications at the start of each source file. The user of any modified Product code must know that the source file is not original.

At your discretion, you may rewrite or reuse any part of the Product so that your derived code is not obviously part of the Product. This derived code does not fall under the Product License Agreement directly, but you must include a credit at the start of each source file indicating the original authorship and source of the code, and a statement of copyright as follows:

"Parts copyright (c) 1998-2000 Monicsoft"

Rights of Distribution

You may freely distribute the Product, or any functional subset of the Product, by any means. This covers, but is not limited to, distribution of original or modified copies of the product source code, tutorial images and animations. The License, in the form of the MOnitor layer called "legal" must accompany any such distribution.

You may charge a fee for distributing the Product, for providing a warranty on the Product, for making modifications to the Product, or for any other service provided in relation to the Product. You are not required to ask my permission for any of these activities.

At no time will Monicsoft be associated with any distribution of the Product except that supplied from the New Bulgarian University Internet site http://www.nbu.bg.

Disclaimer of Warranty

The Product is provided as free software, in the hope that it will be useful. It is provided "as-is", without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to determining the suitability, quality and performance of the Product is with you. Should the Product prove defective, the full cost of repair, servicing, or correction lies with you.

Technical Support

Limited technical support can be had from radu@monicsoft.net. Full guaranteed technical support is subject to a support license which has to be negociated with Monicsoft: current prices and commercial conditions can be had on request from the same email address.

20 June, 2000