Intelligent Labelling Explorer A Project at the University of Edinburgh into Dynamic Hypertext Generation.

ILEX is an EPSRC funded project, which started in October 1995 and runs for three years. The project is run jointly between the Human Communication Research Centre and the Department of Artificial Intelligence.

The focus of the project is automatic text generation. In this field, systems are built that produce descriptive, explanatory, or argumentative texts to accomplish various different communicative tasks. We have built a system that produces descriptions of objects encountered during a guided tour of a museum gallery. Currently the tour is of a `virtual' gallery, explored via a hypertext interface. The hypertext pages produced by the system are different from conventional hypertext pages in that they are generated dynamically---in other words, they are tailored to a particular user in a particular communicative situation. This flexibility has a number of advantages. For one thing, we can take into account the visitor's level of expertise about the objects. (Is (s)he an expert? A child? Or just a general browser?) Furthermore, we can take into account the discourse history---the objects which the visitor has already seen---so that information the visitor has already assimilated can be taken into account in the current description. For instance, the description of the object currently being viewed can make use of comparisons and contrasts to previously-viewed objects, while omitting any background information that the visitor has already been told.

Essentially, the medium of dynamic hypertext makes it possible for the generation system to pursue its own agenda of educational and communicative goals, while allowing the user the freedom to browse the collection of objects in any order, as in a conventional hypertext. The aim is to reproduce the kind of descriptions that a real curator might give, were the visitor to have one at their elbow.

For more information:

	System Demonstration: a prototype version of the system, which gives descriptions of objects from the Royal Museum of Scotland's 20th Century Jewellery gallery.
	Project Description: more details about the ILEX project and its offshoots.
	Ilex2.0 Manual: the ILEX 2.0 User Manual (in preparation).
	Ilex3.0 Manual: the ILEX 3.0 User Manual (in preparation).
	Publications: a list of ILEX-related publications.
	Other Software: other ILEX-related software.
	Corpora: some of the corpora connected with the project.
	Final Report: the final report to the funders, EPSRC.
	Fans: a picture of Ilex being looked at with interest by Prince Andrew.