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<Paper uid="W94-0318">
  <Title>Towards the application of text generation in an integrated publication system*</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="153" type="abstr">
    <SectionTitle>
Abstract
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    <Paragraph position="0"> We describe the application of multilingual text generation in a system for assisting the process of publication. This system is an editor's workbench for preparation of the publication of an art history encyclopedia (the Macmillan Dictionary of Art), which is itself part of an integrated pub!ication environment being developed at GMD-IPSI. We show how an editor's tasks can be facilitated by the use of NLP (natural language processing) systems and suggest the important role of text generation in future electronic publications as products. In both cases, we focus on text generation as providing an essential new mode of information presentation. Text generation provides a quality gain in which the flexibility of the electronic product is augmented; in particular, views on knowledge expressed as text, possibly in different languages are incorporated. The major prerequisite for making this possible is an explicit and systematic representation of genres or text types combined with a general interfacing method for specific domain knowledge.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> 1 Overview of the paper The function of this paper is two fold. First, we present an example of a new application area for text generation: support tools for electronic publishing. Second, we provide a brief overview of a new generation architecture based closely on the 'stratified context' systemic-functional linguistic model of \[Martin, 1992\]. The aim of the latter introduction is primarily to promote discussion of this kind of architecture, since the details that can be presented in the space of this paper are necessarily limited. The architecture is also highly experimental at this time. The simultaneous presentation of an application emphasizes the systemic-functional lin*The research described in this paper was supported in part by the European ESPRIT Basic Research Action DAN: DELION (EP6665) and by the US National Science Foundation Grant IRI-9003087. John Bateman is also on indefinite leave from the Penman Project, USC/ISI, Marina det Rey, California guistic commitment to the inseparability of theory and practise.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The background context of the work reported here is an electronic publishing support tool consisting of a workbench for assisting the tasks of an editor involved in the construction of a large encyclopedia of art history, the Macmillan Dictionary of Art. This editor's workbench \[MShr and Rostek, 1993, Rostek et at., 1994\] is part of an integrated publication environment, which has been used as a framework for the design of an electronic newspaper \[Haake et al., 1993\]. We are currently involved in adding natural language processing capabilities to this system--including most relevantly for this paper, multilingual text generation. This is being used both to further the theoretical specification and practical implementation of the text generation system and to enable us to concretely propose the application of text generation both in the electronically-assisted construction of encyclopedic works and in the electronic version of the electronic publication as product.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> In this paper, we concentrate particularly on the use of the text generation system in order to bring a new functionality to the editor's workbench. The text generation component supports a range of flexible presentation styles tailored to the editor's requirements. The applicability of the text generation system is supported by two crucial capabilities: * the knowledge of genres or text types, which are taken to be the ultimate constraining factor for the realization of views on domain knowledge as text, * a methodology for building a generic interface to domain knowledge.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> We suggest how both these aspects have been strongly supported by a version of the systemic-functional linguistic model employing a stratified view of context. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents our view of the role of natural language processing in electronic publication and introduces our application scenario. We outline here the editor's workbench and describe the necessary application of NLP components, focussing on text generation. We further show how the specific linguistic paradigm we are working with, systemic-functional linguistics, supports the integrated publication scenario. Section 3.1 presents the text generation component in more detail. We argue that the</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="153" end_page="153" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
7th International Generation Workshop * Kennebunkport, Maine * June 21-24, 1994
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> newly gained flexibility (views on domain knowledge expressed as text) can only be made possible in practice if the genre of the text to be produced is explicitly represented. Section 4 gives an example of generation. We conclude the paper with a summary of the new opportunities offered for electronic publishing and electronic and print publications when automatic text generation is made available in the way proposed (Section 5).</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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