Interactive authoring of multimedia documents in a constraint-based authoring system

As multimedia applications spread widely, it is crucial for programming and design support systems to handle "time" in multimedia documents effectivel y and flexibly. This paper presents a set of interactive system support too ls for designing and maintaining the temporal behavior of multimedia docume nts. The tool set provides mechanisms for anomaly detection, temporal query processing, and interactive scheduling. It is based on a fast incremental constraint solver we have developed, which can be adapted by any constraint -based system. The incremental constraint solver provides immediate feedbac k to the user, supporting a highly Interactive design process. Combined wit h existing optimal layout generation mechanisms proposed in the literature, our tools effectively utilize the flexibility provided by constraint-based systems.