Presentation-manipulation-semantics-split model

Abstract

Ubiquitous computing environments are normally composed of a wide range of devices that have different capabilities such as different display sizes and computing powers. It is desirable for users to participate collaborative tasks by using diverse devices that are available in their local environment. In addition, it is needed to make users be able to switch between different devices based on their contexts during participating collaborative tasks. To support seamless transition among interaction devices, it is necessary to ensure the consistency of shared information, to minimize user intervention, and to prevent interference with other users. In this dissertation, we propose a presentation/manipulation/semantics-split (PMS-split) model. In our PMS-split model, we add a manipulation tier in between a presentation and shared semantics of the P/S-split model. Instead of making shared information and functionality have static bindings with single semantics for a collaborative task, the manipulation tier, which provides methods to process the shared semantics, is flexibly coupled to the shared semantics. The manipulation tier partially keeps the state of the shared semantics to ensure consistency among various presentations of the shared semantics in the process of switching interaction devices of a user. In the manipulation tier, additional at-tributes and methods also can be defined for personal manipulation of the shared semantics. This additional attributes can be used to reduce user involvements by migrating their states during the transition among heterogeneous devices. We also define interaction protocols, called p/m/s protocol and p/m/p protocol. The former allows efficient interactions between the presentations and the shared semantics through the corresponding manipulations while the latter defines direct interactions among multiple distributed presentations of a user without going through the shared semantics. We built an application framework which ...