Multimedia Tools and Applications 6, 171–180 (1998) c  1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands. Obstacles in Web Multimedia Publishing: Bringing Conference Proceedings On-Line PETER A. GLOOR FILLIA MAKEDON makedon@dartmouth.edu Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH 03755, USA OLIVER VAN LIGTEN ligten@ifi.unizh.ch Institute for Informatics, University of Zurich, Switzerland Abstract. This paper highlights the problems associated with placing technical multimedia materials on-line on the World Wide Web. It discusses obstacles in (a) automating the collection and processing of the multime- dia components, and (b) limitations in the interface design imposed by restrictions associated with continuous media and especially audio. Using as paradigm the publishing of multimedia technical conference proceedings (“DAGS’95 Conference on Electronic Publishing and the Information Superhighway”), the paper proposes a man- ageable framework for the production of such proceedings, one that allows parallel development of the submitted papers in hypertext format and of the time-based media (talks) in multimedia format. Keywords: multimedia publishing, interactive multimedia conference proceedings, web authoring tools 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to analyze the obstacles in placing technical multimedia materials on-line on the World Wide Web. Technical materials, as opposed to other multimedia ap- plications, involve complex visual components such as, proofs of theorems, flow-diagrams, equations or statistical tables, i.e., interactive multimedia components that the user may wish to interact with as separate entities or retrieve or reference them separately from the rest of the application. Taking as example the papers presented at a computer science conference, “DAGS’95 Conference on Electronic Publishing and the Information Superhighway”, our primary objectives are to see how to (1) automate the task of collection and processing of the multimedia components, and (2) overcome the limitations in designing the web interface, due to restrictions associated with continuous media and especially audio. As a result, we suggest a framework that, as a first step, identifies ways to segment the tasks involved into independent components that can be produced in parallel. In the conference proceedings case, the development of the submitted papers in hypertext format can be done in parallel with the processing of the time-based media (talks) in multimedia format. Using interactive multimedia conference proceedings to study multimedia development on the web allows us to examine a broad range of research topics in the field of hypermedia publishing. For example, it permits us to study ways of substituting for the multidimensional nature of human intercourse during a conference by designing user interface abstractions which are: (1) economical in the web sense (low bandwidth requirements, fast assembly or