Smart style on the semantic web

Web publishing systems have to take into account a plethora of Web-enableddevices, user preferences and abilities. Technologies generating thesepresentations will need to be explicitly aware of the context in which theinformation is being presented. Semantic Web technology can be a fundamentalpart of the solution to this problem by explicitly modeling the knowledge needed to adapt presentations to a specific delivery context. We propose the development of a <em>Smart Style</em> layer which is able to process metadata that describes content and use this metadata to improve the presentation of thecontent to human users. In the paper, we derive the requirements of such aSmart Style layer by considering Web design from both the document engineeringand graphic design perspectives. In addition, design trade-offs made by humandesigners have to be taken into account for the automated process.After stating the requirements for a Smart Style layer, we discuss to whatextent the currently available Web technology can be used and what itslimitations are. The limitations are illustrated with examples of potentialfuture extensions.