Presented by Dr Rotan Hanrahan, Chief Innovations Architect.
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This is offered as part of Mobileaware's response to the Call for Participation in the W3C DIWG Workshop on Device Independent Authoring Techniques, to be held in September 2002. |
Mobileaware is a leading provider of multi-device single-source authoring and transformation solutions. It has always been our position that annotated XHTML coupled with directed transformation is a minimum and sufficient mechanism to enable device independence. Annotation is a key feature of our modular extension to XHTML and we are keen to see the benefits of annotation being made available to all through the standardisation processes.
Annotation is the method by which an author adds structural information to content. This information pertains to the relationships of subsets of the content, their relative importance, their suitability to different contexts etc. Annotation may be provided within the document (embedded) or attached to the document as separate data (external). Mobileaware currently employs an embedded approach to annotation.
A directed XHTML transformation takes its cues from the original content, from the accompanying annotation and from the delivery context. Annotation is represented in the document object model in the same way as other content nodes, but the effects of annotation can span the entire model, leading to very flexible transformation processes.
Annotation techniques have been proposed in the past, but these have been complex and so different from traditional content authoring that mainstream adoption is unlikely. Mobileaware believes that annotation can be made simple and compatible with existing authoring techniques, which will ease adoption and thereby address the multi-device challenges.
As part of a workshop presentation, Mobileaware intends to demonstrate a subset of its annotation technologies, and to explore the future possibilities of the techniques, leading to greater power and flexibility while retaining simplicity and compatibility.
The key to Mobileaware's technology is in its ability to make maximum use of information provided through annotation, but we also believe that annotation has many other uses (e.g. intelligent caching, content aggregation etc.). It should be obvious that agreement on annotation techniques would be of considerable benefit to the Web community. Mobileaware will contribute to any activity that can bring about such an agreement.
Mobileaware uses an annotation technique in its multi-device authoring and transformation solutions, and we would like to share our experience through the Device Independent Authoring Techniques workshop. It is our hope that this will demonstrate the simplicity of annotation and encourage an activity to develop an agreed approach.
Mobileaware Ltd. W3C member. Member of W3C-DIWG
www.mobileaware.com