Rendering DIAL

Dear Device Independence Working Group,

I am an undergraduate reading for BEng/MEng Computer Interactive Systems
at the University of Birmingham in the UK and I am very interested in
the activities of the Device Independence Working Group. I am also
currently completing a paper for a competition entry which touches on
these issues.

Please tell me if there is a more appropriate place to ask these questions.

I am interested to know whether members of the working group envisage
Device Independent Authoring Language documents being rendered natively
(say, in a web browser) or transformed (with either client or
server-side adaptation) into another format first. Or perhaps both uses
are intended?

I understand that it would be possible to transform a DIAL document into
another format using XSLT, but for server-side adaptation that would
require an XSL stylesheet for every conceivable format, even those which
the author of a document may not envisage.

Also, how far does "device independence" stretch exactly? For example,
do you think a certain resource could be represented by a device as
simplistic as a light switch? A URI could be used to point at a resource
http://house/lounge/lamp which could be rendered by a light switch in
the room or on a control panel somewhere else in the building. Is this
stretching the language too far?

Thank you for your time

Ben Francis

Received on Saturday, 27 May 2006 13:11:24 UTC