This volume brings together papers by experts in different areas of computer science, who have a common interest in the design and management of visual interfaces. Since cognitive science and metaphor analysis prove useful for understanding the basic mechanisms which allow visual interfaces to be easy to learn and use, these topics are also featured. Other areas focused on are: visual languages, visual database systems, intelligent agents for system interaction, graphical and pictorial communication tools, multimedia environments and specific technological developments.

Although there has been much progress in developing theories, models and systems in the areas of natural language processing (NLP) and vision processing (VP), there has hitherto been little progress in integrating these two subareas of artificial intelligence. The papers in Integration of Natural Language and Vision Processing focus on site descriptions, such as the work at Apple Computer, California, and the DFKI, Saarbrücken, on historical surveys and philosophical issues, on systems that have been built, enabling communication through text, speech, sound, touch, video, graphics and icons, and on the automatic presentation of information, whether it be in the form of instruction manuals, statistical data or visualisation of language. There is also a review of Mark Maybury's book Intelligent Multimedia Interfaces. Audience: Vital reading for all interested in the SuperInformationHighways of the future.

This supplement covers topics ranging from academic library funding to visual information querying.

One can observe that a wide range of human activities involves various forms of de sign. Especially if the goal implies the creation of an artifact, design is at the very center of these activities. It is the general understanding in the public to place design especially in the context of, for example, fashion, furniture, household items, cars, and architecture or in a more general way at the intersection of art and engineering. Of course, in the field of information technology, developers of software and hard ware are called system 'designers'. Design can be identified and considered in the context of many activities related to pUblishing: creating a product ad in a magazine, designing the layout of a newspaper, authoring a book. Summarizing these exam ples as 'creating documents', these are activities where two challenges with respect to design have to be met. Designing the content, its structure, and its relationship to the existing knowledge of potential readers is one, while the other refers to the 'rhetorical' aspects including designing the presentation of the material in order to communicate the content. Publishing is communicating knowledge.

This supplement to the Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology looks at subjects ranging from algorithmic learning theory to statistical language modelling.

This is a compilation of the classic readings in intelligent user interfaces. This text focuses on intelligent, knowledge-based interfaces, combining spoken language, natural language processing, and multimedia and multimodal processing.

This book constitutes the strictly reviewed post-workshop documentation of the First International Conference on Cooperative Multimodal Communication held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 1995. The volume presents an introductory survey and carefully re vised and updated full versions of three invited contributions and 14 papers selected for inclusion in the book after intensive reviewing. Among the issues addressed are intelligent multimedia retrieval, cooperative conversation, agent system communication, multimodal maps, multimodal plan presentation, multimodal user interfaces, multimodal dialog, and various systems for multimodal HCI.

This study explores the design and application of natural language text-based processing systems, based on generative linguistics, empirical copus analysis, and artificial neural networks. It emphasizes the practical tools to accommodate the selected system.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA), held in Prague, Czech Republic, in September 1993. Traditionally the objective of the DEXA conferences is to serve as an international forum for the discussion and exchange of research results and practical experinece among theoreticians and professionals working in the field of database and artificial intelligence technologies. Despite the fact that in the conference title the applications aspect is mentioned explicitly, the theoretical and the practical points of view in the field are well-balanced in the program of DEXA'93. The growing importance of the conference series is outlined by the remarkably high number of 269 submissions and by the support given by renown organizations. DEXA'93 is held for the first time outside the former GDR in an East-European country, and is essentially contributing to the advancement of the East-West scientific cooperation in the field of database and AI systems. This proceedings contains the 78 contributed papers carefully selected by an international program committee with thesupport of a high number of subreferees. The volume is organized in sectionson data models, distributed databases, advanced database aspects, database optimization and performance evaluation, spatial and geographic databases, expert systems and knowledge engineering, legal systems, other database and artificial intelligence applications, software engineering, and hypertext/hypermedia and user interfaces.

The following are th€:" proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Human and Machine Perception held in Trabia, Italy, on July 21~25, 1996, under the auspices of two Institutions: the Cybernetic and Biophysics Group (GNCB) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and the 'Centro Interdipartimentale di Tecnologie della Conoscenza' ofPalenno University. A broad spectrum of topics are covered in this series, ranging from computer perception to psychology and physiology of perception (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.). The theme of this workshop was: "Human and Machine Perception: Information Fusion". The goal of information and sensory data fusion is to integrate internal knowledge with complementary and/or redundant information from many sensors to achieve (and maintain) a better knowledge of the environment. The mechanism behind the integration of information is one of the most difficult challenges in understanding human and robot perception. The workshop consisted of a pilot phase of eight leCtures introducing perception sensorialities in nature and artificial systems, and of five subsequent modules each consisting of two lectures (dealing with solutions in nature and machines respectively) and a panel discussion.