A1: Information Space Environments

Interchange of Structured Multimedia Documents Containing External Information

Acebron, Jose Jesus ( acebron@ac.upc.es)

Delgado, Jaime ( delgado@ac.upc.es)

Abstract

The coexistence of many multimedia document handling applications, different proprietary storage and interchange formats, and the great variety of content types included in documents, decreases the capability of interchange of multimedia documents between different systems not using the same proprietary document applications and formats.

Many multimedia documents contain information generated by other applications, such as CAD designs, simulation results, etc. There is a need for a mechanism which allows this information to be included in multimedia documents and facilitates further interchange. This paper proposes a solution to allow the interchange of multimedia documents (MMD) containing external application information. The mechanism proposed is a general interface which results from the study of the interaction between multimedia document structure and document content in the document interchange and handling processes.

This paper describes a mechanism that allows the open interchange of structured MMDs containing external application information. This mechanism must consider the three following aspects:

a)

pre-interchange processing of the MMD;

b)

interchange of the MMD;

c)

post-interchange processing of the MMD.

The MMD must be processed to include the external information into the document. Some examples of this kind of processing are:

• testing of the external information (for example, verification of a spreadsheet before its inclusion into the document);
• resolution of (external or internal) references;
• inclusion of the external information into the MMD.

For the inclusion of external information into MMDs, a generalized interface is proposed, which provides the functionality for the inter-operation between the document structure and the document content. This interface is the generalization of the interaction between document structure and document content. Complex multimedia documents consist of a document structure and a document content. The document structure may be more or less complex depending of the type of document. The content of the document may be simple, such as text, and complex, such as video. A more detailed description of this interface is provided in the paper.

3) INTERCHANGE OF THE MMD

For the interchange of the MMD, the following points are to be considered:

• Interchange format: an interchangeable version of the document is to be generated.
• Alternative representation: the MMDs may also contain an alternative representation of the external application information. This alternative representation should be a simple (more compatible) format that allows other recipients, that do not have this application, to process the multimedia document. For example, the alternative representation of a CAD design may be a raster picture. Using this alternative representation, a minimum of information is guaranteed to any recipient.
• Security: some parts may be removed for security reasons before interchange. Other parts may be enciphered.

• the interchangeable version of the application information;
• the alternative representation of the application information.

4) POST-INTERCHANGE PROCESSING OF THE MMD

The recipient of the document can process it, performing the following steps:

• conversion from the interchangeable format of the MMD to any other format;
• access to protected parts (de-enciphering);
• analysis of the external information types included: if the recipient of the document cannot process an information type included in the document, the alternative representation may be used for further processing.