Virtual Document Planner

Ongoing Project

The Virtual Document Planner (VDP) is a generic engine for delivering tailored information. It was originally designed to produce documents dynamically, integrating data from multiple sources and customising the content for a user. We are currently extending the VDP to handle both textual and graphical data planning for controlling a Graphical User Interface. This requires the VDP to support display and potentially generation of images, graphics, etc. The main focus of these extensions is on the production of coherent graphical interfaces that appropriately highlight important information.

The architecture of the VDP is a typical Natural Language Generation (NLG) architecture where the linguistic resources are separate from the planning engines.

The engines use discourse rules to select and organise the content. The content is extracted from multiple, heterogeneous sources such as databases, XML data sources, and HTML web pages. Once extracted, this data is fused to create a coherent virtual document, tailored to user preferences, which achieves a specific communication purpose. Further presentation design rules then determine an appropriate way to realise the content and structure of the presentation on the relevant output medium (eg HTML web page, Palm Pilot, Mobile Phone screen, speech, multimedia display) by making inferences based on coherence relationships encoded in the content.

The actual realisation of the presentation can involve the generation of text and graphics from first principles, and the use of parameterised templates, canned text and existing graphics.

The VDP has been used to create the following application prototypes:

• TIDDLER, which uses the VDP to deliver tailored travel information to users.
• PERCY, which uses the VDP to create and deliver customised brochures about CSIRO and its research to both researchers and business people
• DFDMSA, which uses the VDP as part of its Task Driven Interface Module to deliver coherent, relevant information to support users in an Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) environment.

last updated 23/09/05
Andrew.Lampert@csiro.au

Contact:
ict@csiro.au