DESIGN ISSUES OF PRESENTATION PROTOCOLS IN OFFICE SYSTEMS.

In future office systems there will be a set of working stations interconnected by local networks. The exchange of information can take place in two different ways: (1) assign a channel for each information type (voice channel, image channel, text and data channel) and process at both ends each information separately; (2) mix the information at the originating side, exchange, over the network, a message having a standard format, and restore the information at the destination side. A methodology is given for defining a set of data structuring rules, which will allow the definition of a format that embed, lines, pages and forms of alphanumeric text, with geometric graphics, images and voice. The definition is based on the notion of the virtual terminal, its conceptual-data-store, and the types of operations allowed on this data-store.