Reusing information repositories for flexibly generating adaptive presentations

To build information presentations adapted to the user's needs and interests from an existing repository of information, it is necessary that the data are appropriately structured and annotated. We propose a formalism for annotating a set of existing repositories of data (texts, audio messages, images) for a presentation planner both to reason on the deep semantic structure of the ongoing presentation and to adjust its surface form. Discourse strategies and linguistic roles coming from the field of natural language generation are exploited to ensure the assembling of coherent and cohesive messages tailored to the user's interests and needs. The aim of approach described is to develop a prototype to deliver adaptive audio based information presentations to a visitor who moves in a museum using a palmtop computer which knows where the user is.