Intermediary-based transcoding framework

With the rapid increase in the amount of content on the World Wide Web, it is now becoming clear that information cannot always be stored in a form th at anticipates all of its possible uses. One solution to this problem is to create transcoding intermediaries that convert data, on demand, from one f orm into another. Up to now, these transcoders have usually been stand-alon e components, converting one particular data format to another particular d ata format A more flexible approach is to create modular transcoding units that can be composed as needed. In this paper, we describe the benefits of an intermediary-based transcoding approach and present a formal framework f or document transcoding that is meant to simplify the problem of composing transcoding operations.