It
is our great honor and pleasure to welcome you to the Second International
Workshop on Web Document Analysis - WDA2003.
With
the ever-increasing use of the Web, a growing number of documents are published
and accessed on-line. The emerging issues pose new challenges for Document
Analysis. Although the development of XML and the new initiatives on the
Semantic Web aim to improve the machine-readability of web documents, it is not
likely to eliminate the need for content analysis. This is particularly true for
the kind of web documents created as web publications (vs. services) where
visual appearance is critical. Such content analysis is crucial for applications
such as information extraction, web mining, summarization, content re-purposing
for mobile and multi-modal access and web security. The need has become evident
for discussions to identify the role of Document Analysis in this new technical
landscape. To address this growing demand, the First International Workshop on
Web Document Analysis (WDA2001) was held in Seattle on September 8, 2001, to
enthusiastic response from the document research
community.
The
Second International Workshop on Web Document Analysis (WDA2003) builds on the
success of the first one and continues to serve as a forum for discussing
emerging issues in Document Analysis in Web environments. The nineteen accepted
papers reflect the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of this field, touching
on areas including document image processing, content extraction, web mining,
web content repurposing, document modeling, annotation and human interactive
proofs for web security. In addition, we have invited experts from these diverse
areas for a panel discussion on the state of art and future directions of Web
Document Analysis.
It
is our hope that this workshop will bring together researchers from diverse
research backgrounds and serve to stimulate new ideas, new collaborations and
new research activities in the field of Web Document
Analysis.
We
would like to thank the members of the program committee for their thorough and
prompt reviews and numerous constructive ideas; all contributing authors and
panelists for their enthusiasm and support; and the organizers of ICDAR2003 for
their generous help in making the organizational
arrangements.
WDA2003
Co-Chairs
Apostolos Antonacopoulos and Jianying Hu