PML: Representing Procedural Domains for Multimedia Presentations

Abstract

A central issue in the development of multimedia systems is the presentation of the information to the user of the system and how to best represent that information to the designer of the system. Typically, the designers create a system in which content and presentation are inseparably linked; specific presentations and navigational aids are chosen for each piece of content and hard-coded into the system. We argue that the representation of content should be decoupled from the design of the presentation and navigational structure, both to facilitate modular system design and to permit the construction of dynamic multimedia systems that can determine appropriate presentations in a given situation on the fly. We propose a new markup language called PML (Procedural Markup Language) which allows the content to be represented in a flexible manner by specifying the knowledge structures, the underlying physical media, and the relationships between them using cognitive media roles. The PML description can then be translated into different presentations depending on such factors as the context, goals, presentation preferences, and expertise of the user.