Fig 6 - uploaded by Louis Weitzman
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An example of partial input to the parser for the online magazine example. Input is a set of primitive objects (e.g., text, numbers, and images) and relations between the objects (e.g., author-of, description-of, page-of, image-of, and precedes).
Source publication
This paper describes an approach to the problem of articulating multimedia information based on parsing and syntax-directed
translation that uses Relational Grammars. This translation is followed by a constraint-solving mechanism to create the final
layout. Grammatical rules provide the mechanism for mapping from a representation of the content and...
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Citations
... Rule-based grammars have been used to integrate professional knowledge for improving designers' creativity and reducing their repeated works [1][2][3][4][5]. This article proposes a progressive methodology for automatic logo generation based on the structure of logo types and their specialized design process. ...
This paper proposes the application of the Shape Grammar and Color Grammar to the automatic generation of logo designs based artists’ logo creation knowledge and logo’s visual structures. A set of rules are proposed to encode the design knowledge, and to enable automatic generation. The rules also serve as an instrument for exploring the relationships between visual elements and viewers’ perception. An experiment has been conducted to validate the feasibility of the proposed approach.
... Current research in the field of automated document layout has mainly explored graphical constraints and typographic grids. Constraints: Weitzmann's system [16] and Graf's LayLab [10] use grammars to specify constraints of two types: abstract constraints (e. g., description-of, author-of etc.) and spatial constraints (e. g., right-of, top-aligned etc.). Spatial constraints can be directly used as input to the constraint solver. ...
In many application domains there is a strong need to produce content both for traditional print media and for interactive media. In order to fully benefit from digital devices, online documents must provide mechanisms to support interactivity and for the personalization of content. Thus, powerful authoring tools as well as flexible layout techniques are needed to display dynamic information effectively. In this paper we present a novel approach to template- based design of complex non-grid layouts and propose a unique combination of constraint-based and force-based layout mechanisms. Our authoring tool enables designer to specify designs pattern with overlapping content elements that are transformed into layout constraints and force systems by the layout engine. The smooth integration of interactive illustrations into complex layouts also induces constraints to achieve temporal coherent layout. We propose algorithms to achieve graceful layouts even when the space consumption of content elements significantly differs from the defaults specified in layout templates.
... Our work was influenced by that of Weitzman and Wittenburg [32], who applied a graph grammar formalism -Relation Grammar [33] -to the automatic presentation of multimedia documents. The grammar governs the structure of the document. ...
Online multimedia presentations, such as news, need to be constantly updated. Increasing demands are also being made for accessing online multimedia documents from mobile devices such as PDAs. There is an urgent need for a sound but practical formalism that supports automatic adaptation to the change of media content, display environments, and user intention. This paper presents a visual language approach to the layout adaptation of multimedia objects. The underlying theory of our approach is a context-sensitive graph grammar formalism enriched with facilities for spatial representation and specification. The paper focuses on the issues and techniques for size adaptation and style adaptation in response to the change of device requirements and user interactions.
... A further system operating along the same lines was developed by Weitzman and Wittenburg [Weitzman and Wittenburg, 1996]. Their approach was to use higher order context free grammars to describe the problem together with a constraint solver to carry out bottom up checking of the parse trees. ...
The virtual cameras used in computer graphics are normally controlled by user input or they are generated by a simple rule, which might require them to remain in position relative to a moving object. In this thesis an alternative method of control is proposed in which camera set-ups are derived from a description of the properties of the picture the camera is intended to produce. An analysis of the requirements of such a declarative system and possible methods of achieving them has been carried out, and is presented.
... The use of grammatical formalisms inside of multimedia systems is the most appropriate way to move from a purely manual approach towards an automatic approach [22]. The advantages to be gained by this approach include the possibility of introducing a graphical front-end for TAO construction, automatic grammatical checking for the correctness of the structure generated, and introduction of a syntax-directed editor. ...
... This limits the generation of multimedia presentations by the system to those that can be analyzed by the parser. It is important to make the following observation, which also applies to Wittenburg's relational grammars [21, 22, 23], on the relation between visual grammars and parsers. Today many multidimensional grammars having high generative powers have been produced. ...
Multimedia systems incorporating hyperlinks and user interaction can be prototyped using TAOML, an extension of HTML. TAOML is used to define a Teleaction Object (TAO) which is a multimedia object with associated hypergraph structure and knowledge structure. The user can create and modify the private knowledge of a TAO so that the TAO will react automatically to certain events. The hypergraph structure supports the effective presentation and efficient communication of multimedia information. TAOs are valuable since they greatly improve the selective access and presentation of relevant multimedia information. In this paper, a formal specification methodology for TAOs using SR grammars is described. An attributed SR grammar is then introduced in order to associate knowledge with the TAO. The limitations necessary to achieve an efficient parser are given. The grammatical formalism allows for validation and verification of the system specification. This methodology thus provides a principled approach to specify, verify, validate and prototype multimedia applications.
... When a communicative act is to be expressed using a number of media items these methods can be traded-off against one another. For example, rather than display many items together, links can be made among smaller groups of the items, or the sequential playing of items may be a suitable alternative for laying out items next to each other at the same time [28]. The choice among these alternatives in the Fiets application is described in other work [26]. ...
Having the content of a presentation adapt to the needs, resources and prior activities of a user can be an important benefit of electronic documents. While part of this adaptation is related to the encodings of individual data streams, much of the adaptation can/should be guided by the semantics in and among the objects of the presentation. The semantics involved in having hypermedia presentations adapt can be divided between adaptive hypermedia, which adapts autonomously, and adaptable hypermedia, which requires presentationexternal intervention to be adapted. Understanding adaptive and adaptable hypermedia and the differences between them helps in determining the best manner with which to have a particular hypermedia implementation adapt to the varying circumstances of its presentation. The choice of which type of semantics to represent can affect speed of the database management system processing them. This paper reflects on research and implementation approaches toward both adaptive and adaptable hypermedia and how they apply to specifying the semantics involved in hypermedia authoring and processing. We look at adaptive approaches by considering CMIF and SMIL. The adaptable approaches are represented by the SGML-related collection of formats and the Standard Reference Model (SRM) for IPMS are also reviewed. Based on our experience with both adaptive and adaptable hypermedia, we offer recommendations on how each approach can be supported at the data storage level.
... Pen-based systems, for instance, can make use of methods to recognize partial expressions and replace pen strokes with objects as they are sketched (e.g., Gross 1994) independently of whether the entire design can be recognized. Graphical design applications can make use of rule systems to automatically create composite objects and install default choices (e.g., Weitzman and Wittenburg 1993) also independently of whether the entire design can be recognized. Here we introduce another application of visual parsing techniques that recognizes partial expressions in the domain of information modeling and visualization . ...
... Initially it was used to parse mathematical expressions and line-drawings for pen-based interfaces. Later applications made use of parsing for verifying multidimensional data (Wittenburg 1996), offering interactive design support (Weitzman and Wittenburg 1993 ), and generating multimedia documents from underlying relational information (Weitzman and Wittenburg 1996). The expressions generable or recognizable by Relational Grammars are formally defined as follows. ...
... Initially it was used to parse mathematical expressions and line-drawings for pen-based interfaces. Later applications made use of parsing for verifying multidimensional data (Wittenburg 1996), offering interactive design support (Weitzman and Wittenburg 1993 ), and generating multimedia documents from underlying relational information (Weitzman and Wittenburg 1996). The expressions generable or recognizable by Relational Grammars are formally defined as follows. ...
: Relational Grammars (RGs) are one of the higher-dimensional grammar formalisms that have been proposed for representing visual languages (VLs). This paper serves as an overview of the formalism as well as a case study of its application in a visual language interface (VLI) for process modeling. Relational Grammars are presumed to be a member of the context-free family of Constraint Multiset Grammars (Marriott and Meyer 1996), and several subclasses of Relational Grammars have been proposed that have been motivated by the algorithmic demands of specific applications. The applications that have been explored go beyond the exercise of recognizing visual expressions that can be constructed with standard graphical editors. Here we focus on a business process modeling tool called ShowBiz and discuss how grammatical representation and parsing is used dynamically in creating abstractions for process encapsulation and visualization. 1.0 Introduction From a classical linguistic point of view,...
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... Another attributed multiset grammar formalism, termed relational grammars, was introduced by Wittenburg and Weitzman [196,194,195,192,193,191] and variants of the formalism have been used for several interactive and multimedia applications [187,188,189]. This approach inherits ideas from computational linguistics and uses unification-based constraints to express spatial constraints and to allow the computation of feature structures in passive grammar attributes. ...
One of the most fundamental questions in visual language research is how to specify a visual language. By a visual language we mean a set of diagrams which are valid “sentences” in that language where a diagram is a collection of “symbols” in a two or three dimensional space. Which sentences are valid and what their meaning is depends on spatial relationships between the symbols. Thus, for example, mathematical expressions, plans, and musical notation are commonly used visual languages. In this chapter we survey the many formalisms which have been suggested over the last three decades for visual language specification, and also indicate their possible applications.
... Multimedia style sheet systems 7,14] uniformly use a constraint-based model of layout, because constraints are better suited to non-textual media than the ow models used in text-oriented style sheet systems 3, 6,12]. Some multimedia style sheet systems 14] only use constraints for layout, but in our work on the Proteus style sheet system 2, 11] and the PSL style sheet language 9], we use constraints as the foundation of the entire style management process. ...
Multimedia style sheet systems uniformly use a constraint-based model of layout. Constraints provide a uniform mechanism for all aspects of style management and layout and are better-suited to non-textual media than flow models.
We have developed a prototype style sheet system, Proteus, and have used it with a variety of document types, including program source code. This work has exposed a critical performance problem in constraint-based style sheet runtime systems: memory usage. Existing constraint systems treat cached attribute values and constraints as first-class objects, each with its own storage. Program syntax trees are very large and the constraint data for a medium-sized source file can easily consume tens of megabytes of main memory. This scalability problem would be exposed by any document of any type containing thousands of objects. We present here a new constraint-based runtime system that is substantially faster and dramatically more space-efficient than its predecessor, which had first-class constraint objects. The improved performance is the result of exploiting important common cases and a sophisticated constraint representation that allows considerable sharing of information between individual constraints.
