CMIFed: a presentation environment for portable hypermedia documents

This paper discusses the architecture and implementation of CMIFed, an editing and presentation environment for hypermedia documents. Typically such documents contain a mixture of text, images, audio, and video (and possibly other media), augmented with user interaction. CMIFed allows the author flexibility in specifying what is presented when, using multiple simultaneous output channels. Unlike systems that use a timeline or scripting metaphor to control the presentation, in CMIFed the user manipulates a collection of events and timing constraints among those events. Common timing requirements can be specified by grouping events together in a tree whose nodes indicate sequential and parallel composition. More general timing constraints between events can be added in the form of synchronization arcs. User interaction is supported in the form of hyperlinks. We place CMIFed in the context of the CMIF model for hypermedia documents, which formalizes the properties of hypermedia presentations in a platform-independent manner. CR Subject Classification (1991): H.5.1, H.5.2, I.7.2, I.3.6, I.3.4, D.4.1, D.4.4, D.4.7.