A framework for generating adaptable hypermedia documents

Being able to author a hypermedia document once for presentation under a wide variety of potential circumstances requires that it be stored in a manner that is adaptable to these circumstances. Since the nature of these circumstances is not always known at authoring time, specifying how a document adapts to them must be a process that can be performed separately from its original authoring. These distinctions include the porting of the document to different platforms and formats and the adapting of the document’s presentation to suit the needs of the user and of the current state of the presentation environment. In this paper we discuss extensions to our CMIF hypermedia authoring and presentation environment that provide adaptability through this distinction between authoring and presentation specification. This extension includes the use of HyTime for document representation and of DSSSL for presentation specification. We also discuss the Berlage architecture, our extension to HyTime that specifies the encoding of certain hypermedia concepts useful for presentation specification.