The Rich Media Initiative (RMI) allows writers to easily publish multiple versions of electronic texts with little or no effort. RMI technologies are based on client-side implementations of the popular Language Update Service for Electronic Readings (LUSER), which has also been used to build applications such as the Receiver of Electronic Articles and Documents as Linguistic Operations Using Decibels (READ ALOUD).

Version history

This version: 1.0 (2005‒06‒29)

A short summary of the LUSER

The LUSER is a critical component in almost every single piece of available computer technology. Its core module is the Broker for Relaying and Accepting Impulses through Neurons (BRAIN), which analyzes the environment around the LUSER and acts on that information by leveraging the features of the BRAIN. The LUSER is able to dynamically change the meaning of a text without making any modifications to the content itself. These alterations to how the BRAIN processes information are at the core of RMI technologies.

How it works

LUSER clients are alerted to the presence of an RMI-enabled object by the presence of a tag that marks said object as capable of being altered by an RMI proxy. A tag can take various forms, such as an image or plain text, so long as it is understandable by most LUSER clients. Some examples of tags are shown below.

Rich Media Initiative enabled

After the proxy is aware of the tag, it can then enable various RMI translation modes, such as those listed below.

Translation modes

There are several ways in which the RMI proxy can adjust the sense of document content on-the-fly. Only official implementations of the RMI technology are listed below; unofficial implementations also exist and can be found from various sources, but are not supported by the RMI.

Using alternative pronunciations

The RMI proxy can instruct the BRAIN to use less-common ways of pronouncing certain portions of data; for example, the word imperative can also be said as I’m per at Ive, which conveys a completely different message.

Interchanging definitions of homonyms

When a single word or phrase has multiple meanings, the RMI proxy can request that the BRAIN use a random definition instead of attempting to find the intended one by heuristics. When the term sanction is encountered, for example, the BRAIN can interpret it using one of the various senses of the word, which include to encourage and to ban.

Restructuring linguistic constructs

It is possible for the RMI proxy to direct the BRAIN to take advantage of grammatical ambiguity in a section of a work. Using this ability, the sentence can fires right now can be variously taken to mean stop fires immediately, a can currently ignites, are fires able to correct now?, and many other meanings. The sloppiness inherent in a large amount of published content is of benefit to this RMI translation mode.

Ignoring figurative language

The RMI proxy can deactivate the BRAIN’s ability to render figurative language. Idioms such as it’s raining cats and dogs will therefore be taken literally to mean that furry quadruped mammals are falling out of the sky.

Attempting to decipher steganography

Using steganography, messages can be covertly embedded in innocuous-looking data. RMI extensions to the BRAIN can try to extract information from such sources using a variety of methods, such as only using the first letters of each word.

Adding RMI functionality to your content

The RMI proxy does all translation on the on the client’s end of the transmission, so nothing more than a tag is needed for it to discover content with translation capabilities and enable the appropriate layers.