Shijian Lu and Cécile Paris

CSIRO ICT Centre

Sydney, Australia

Authoring Content Structure for

Adaptive Documents

www.csiro.auOutline

Motivation and background

Our AH framework

Constructor

Discussion

Conclusions

www.csiro.auMotivations

People have different (information) needsAdaptive systems becoming increasingly

important

To make these systems more practical, their users need to be able to author the resources required

www.csiro.auBackground: Two Main Types of Systems

Systems with an open set of (heterogeneous) information resources

Systems that create a tailored hypermedia space

Often based on linguistics principles

Systems with a closed set of information resources

Systems that provide navigation & support in an existing hypermedia space

Often based on learning theories

Systems with an open set of (heterogeneous) information resources

Systems that create a tailored hypermedia space

Often based on linguistics principles

www.csiro.auA Tailored Document Environment

I am a surveillance operator for the region

Information sources for the applicationSpecific ApplicationUser Interface

User

Tailored Documents and Presentations

User Query

Framework

Resources

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Myriad: our platform for contextualised information retrieval and delivery

Main component: Virtual Document Planner, a multimedia generation system: dynamically produces hypermedia documents belongs to systems working with open set of information

sources employs a planning engine based on linguistic principles (coherence) employs discourse and presentation strategies highly modular, with declarative resources

Articulates a notion of context (e.g., user, task, environment, dialogue history)

Has been used to built a number of applications

RST-Enablement

RST-Background

RST-List

The documents have an internal structure

www.csiro.auA Tailored Document Environment

I am a surveillance operator for the region

Information sources for the applicationSpecific ApplicationUser Interface

User

Tailored Documents and Presentations

User Query

Framework

Resources

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Example of a required resource (a plan operator)

<operator><id>several-themes-4</id><description>Provide brief-description of projects in a research-lab)</description><effect>(Provide brief-summary of projects ?research-lab to ?user)</effect><constraint>(set ?projects (retrieval:GetLabAttributes ?research-lab project))</constraint><constraint>(Morethan 1 (size ?projects))</constraint><constraint>(set ?content (retrieval:GetProjectAttributePairs project name summary id ?projectss))</constraint><nucleus>

<value>(inform ?user list-of-entities ?content)</value></nucleus><satellite>

<type>optional</type><relation>Preparation</relation><value>(Inform ?user Name "Research Areas")</value>

</satellite></operator>

www.csiro.auWhat is required to write such a plan…

Writing skills (how to structure a document in the application domain and ensure it is coherent)

Computational linguistic skills (how to transform the desired structure into discourse plans, exploiting rhetorical relations)

Knowledge about where to find the information

Knowledge about the required specific syntax and XML

Clearly difficult!

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Providing an abstraction on the discourse operators

Allow authors to specify the structure and content of a text without: computational linguistics expertise

knowledge about the specific syntax required

Decouple specification of the structure of a text from: knowledge of how to retrieve data

specification of the applicability of the structure (i.e., the specification of the constraints for an operator).

www.csiro.auTwo main concepts

Content structure

Retrieval registry library of retrieval functions or specifications (“retrieval services”),

specifying how to get the data.

www.csiro.auAn Example from SciFly

Produces brochures about CSIRO ICT Centre

Brochures tailored to the user’s request

Demonstrated at CeBit (2005-2006, Sydney)

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Constructor: an authoring tool to build content structures

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Goal 1

Constraint

Indicate iteration

Rhetorical relation

Goal 2

Goal 3

Constructor: an overview

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A short example for building a content structure

Defining a node and its decomposition

Defining relationships between nodes

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Click on Node tool

Creating a content node (1)

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Click on Node decomposition

pane

Node edit dialog box

Creating a content node (2)

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Change to desired node

name

Creating a content node (3)

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Click on “link” icon

Defining relationships between nodes (1)

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2. Drag the cursor to the essential node

1. Pressing on a non-essential node

3. Release the mouse at the essential node

Defining relationships between nodes (2)

www.csiro.auDefining relationships between nodes (3)

Select the appropriate relation from the drop down menu

www.csiro.auDefining relationships between nodes (4)

www.csiro.auDiscussion: building content structures

Authors must think explicitly about document structure and relationships between different chunks of information (not about phrasing)

Differences with authoring a document:

Result is an instance of a document

Authors must know actual content

Authors must think about exact order

Authors must work on phrasing

Result is a document specification (from which many documents can be generated)

Authors need to point to where actual content is to be found

System will reason about actual order based on relations

System will generate appropriate phrasing

Authors must think of scope

Authoring a document Authoring a content structure

www.csiro.auConclusions

Constructor is a tool to help write discourse operators required to build an AH application in our framework

It provides an abstraction on discourse operators: the content structure

Current considerations: Extensive functionality wrt discourse operators

Interface proper needs improvements

Future work: Full integration with generation system to allow for “preview”

Evaluation

Allow the authoring of presentation operators