Hypermedia
Presentation Generation
on the Web

 

  • Joost Geurts
  • Lynda Hardman
  • Jacco van Ossenbruggen
  • CWI Amsterdam
 
     

 

     
  Talk overview  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Introduction
  • Multiple delivery publishing on the Web
  • 2nd generation multimedia - Cuypers
  • Towards 3rd generation multimedia
  • Conclusion

 

 

 

  
    2

 

     
  Multimedia on the Web  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Real Multimedia Web content is still rare
    • Mostly bells & whistles to enhance HTML text ...
    • ... or mono-media AV-streams
  • Virtually all presentations are hand-authored
    • proprietary formats that are hard to generate
    • limited support for dynamic content and multichanneling
    • most Web technology is text/page-oriented ...
    • ... with SMIL as one of the few exceptions

 

  
    3

 

     
  2nd generation multimedia  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Adapt to end-user's platform capabilities
    • PC, PDA, mobile, voice-only, ...
  • Adapt to the network resources available
    • bandwidth and other quality of service parameters
  • Personalization
    • language, abilities, level of expertise, ..

 

  
    4

 

     
  Multimedia differs from text  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Different document and presentation abstractions
    • hard to separate style from structure
  • Formatting is not based on text flow
    • no pages or scrollbars, no line-breaking or hyphenation
    • templates often do not work well together
  • Feedback from the formatting back-end required
    • need to check whether proposed layout is feasible
    • layout of media items is less flexible than text layout
  • Transformations are hard in a functional language
    • need to try out designs and backtrack when necessary

 

  
    5

 

     
  Problems with current transformation tools  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Current document transformation and style languages are insufficiently powerful
  • They rely on flexibility of text:
    re-flow, scrollbars, pagination, etc.
    • no pages or scrollbars, no line-breaking or hyphenation
    • templates often do not work well together
  • They are "template-based" and thus cannot cater for wide variations in:
    • dynamic & media-centric content
    • device characteristics
    • user preference

 

  
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  Cuypers Engine  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
    7

 

     
  Cuypers
multimedia generation engine		  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Demo Time

 

  
    8

 

     
  Cuypers - the bad news  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Currently all our design knowledge is:

  • implicit and hidden in the generation rules
  • lost in the generated Web presentation
  • not reusable for other Web applications/sites

 

We need the Semantic Web

 

  
    9

 

     
  Towards 3rd generation multimedia?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
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  Tailored presentation  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
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  Three ingredients  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Content

  
    12

 

     
  Content of example  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genre paintings, drawing or prints depict people in their everyday surroundings: at home, in a café or at work. They appear to be painted from life, but in reality were usually thought up in the artist's studio. Sometimes (but not always!) they contain a moral lesson. In some works the message is clear, in other cases the viewer has to make an effort to interpret the picture. Often, however, these household scenes are simply decorative paintings designed to entertain and amuse.

 

  
    13

 

     
  Three ingredients  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presentation structure

Content

  
    14

 

     
  Presentation structure of example  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

title
|
................
 ................
Genre & Vermeer
|
      
description
|
................
 ................
examples
    |
|
         |
Genre paintings, drawing or prints depict people in their everyday surroundings: at home, in a café or at work. They appear to be painted from life, but in reality were usually thought up in the artist's studio. Sometimes (but not always!) they contain a moral lesson. In some works the message is clear, in other cases the viewer has to make an effort to interpret the picture. Often, however, these household scenes are simply decorative paintings designed to entertain and amuse.
       \

 

 

 

 

  
    15

 

     
  Three ingredients  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presentation structureAesthetics

Content

  
    16

 

     
  Aesthetics of example  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fonts

Layout

Colours
 
    17

 

     
  One size doesn't fit all  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
    18

 

     
  What we need is...  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Correct and relevant information presented to the user

    • conveying underlying relations in the subject matter
    • at a suitable level of detail
    • in the time available to the user
    • using appropriate media
    • in an appropriate style
    • making optimal use of the delivery context
  
    19

 

     
  Create models...  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Need Knowledge of...
Convey underlying relations Domain
Suitable level of detail Discourse
Time available to user User task
Appropriate media Media characteristics
Appropriate style Graphic design
Device characteristics Device capabilities

 

  
    20

 

     
  Three ingredients  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presentation structure, aesthetics and content together.

  
    21

 

     
  Cuypers Knowledge Sources  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
    22

 

     
  Conclusions  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Generating multimedia presentations requires
    • making design dependencies explicit
    • taking these dependencies into account
  • Semantic Web has potential to
    • encode knowledge we use
    • reuse knowledge already available
  • Cuypers system
    • provides an experimentation platform
    • using standard tools and languages as much as possible
  
    23