Presenting dynamically expandable hypermedia

The Multimedia Information Presentation System (MIPS) will allow end-users to browse multimedia information presented in a user-friendly and consistent manner. In its most powerful configuration, it will allow the end-user to formulate queries which are interpreted, analysed , and despatched by the system to heterogeneous distributed external data sources, and to view a coherent and customized presentation of the data retrieved as answers. Data are stored in, or referenced from, a set of hyperdocuments conforming to the ISO standards HyTime and SGML. The hyperdocuments constitute an information web which may be dynamically expanded to accommodate retrieved data. The web navigation structure, structure of information nodes, specification of presentation mechanisms, specification of presentation tools, and data are separable and potentially reusable for different applications, different activities within an application, or different environments. We outline the intended functionality and the design of MIPS, with particular reference to the structure and function of the hypermedia web and the role of the knowledge base system module in its dynamic expansion.