Abstractions in multimedia authoring: the MAVA approach

The support of abstractions in authoring systems increases the efficiency of the specification of multimedia documents. Authoring based on a very low abstraction, for example script programming, is very complex and time consuming. In addition, authoring systems supporting a high abstraction are so far restricted to one specific application area. This paper presents an extensible approach that supports abstractions in different application areas (such as computer-based training or a travel guide).In this approach a meta document model and the corresponding presentation and authoring system are developed. During conception of the authoring system, different concepts (e.g. templates or application specific views) have been realized to introduce further abstractions.