This volume contains the ?nal proceedings of the 2004 Metainformatics Sym- sium (MIS 2004). The event was held during 15¿18 September 2004 in Salzburg, Austria at Salzburg Research. MIS is an annual event focusing on ?nding common ground shared by - searchers and practitioners in many di?erent computer science areas who may use similar methods to achieve di?erent ends. The goal is to ?nd useful abstr- tions, notations, analytical frameworks, formalisms, and systems that improve ourunderstandingoftheunderlyingstructuresofvariousdisciplinesandfamilies of systems within computer science. Ideally these constructs should have usef- ness in conveying knowledge and understanding across disciplinary boundaries. The proceedings of previous MIS events were also published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series: LNCS 3002 (2003), LNCS 2641 (2002), LNCS 2266 (2001), and LNCS 1903 (2000). As with previous events in the MIS series, MIS 2004 attracted quality papers and brought together researchers from many di?erent ?elds within computer s- ence.WeexperiencedinterestingpresentationsandlivelydiscussionsinSalzburg. I hope that you will ?nd the papers contained in this volume as interesting as the other members of the Program Committee and I have. This volume would not have been possible without the help and assistance of many people. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Springereditors,AnnaKramerandChristineGun ¿ ther,andtheExecutiveEditor of the LNCS series, Alfred Hofmann.

Computer Aided Composition.- Supporting Tools for Designing-By-Contract in Component-Based Applications.- Access Rights - The Keys to Cooperative Work/Learning.- Flexible Notifications and Task Models for Cooperative Work Management.- Managing Ontological Complexity: A Case Study.- Looking Beyond Computer Applications: Investigating Rich Structures.- Towards a Generic Building Block for Component-Based Open Hypermedia Systems.- Applying Information Visualisation Techniques to Spatial Hypertext Tools.- An Agenda for Structural Computing Research.- Assessing the Impacts of Open Hypermedia Problems on Structural Computing.- Structural Engineering: Processes and Tools for Developing Component-Based Open Hypermedia Systems.- A Semantic Representation for Domain-Specific Patterns.- Describing Use Cases with Activity Charts.- Spatial Constraint Modelling with a GIS Extension of UML and OCL: Application to Agricultural Information Systems.- Location and Tracking Services for a Meta-UbiComp Environment.- Applying Structural Computing Paradigms to Domain Analysis.- Content Engineering: Bridging the Gap Between Content Creation and Consumption.- Blog Perspectives.