ABSTRACT
This chapter recommends ways to publish electronic documents containing (hyper)text, images, video, audio, and animation. We explain, analyze, and compare authoring environments that can be used to create interactive multimedia documents. We assist in the process of selecting which authoring system to use. One of the most important choices to be made during the process of software development is which tools to use. For developers in the Microsoft Windows environment, this choice is particularly difficult because of the huge number of authoring systems and programming languages on the market, all of which are advertised as the definitive development tool, “tomorrow’s software standard,” “the ultimate hypermedia tool,” or “the professional’s choice.” It cannot be our goal to recommend one specific authoring tool, because the choice depends on the special needs of the user. Our goal is hence to explain the different alternatives available today and the decisions necessary to compare different systems.
