28. The apparatus of claim 27 further comprising: a document viewing interface for a user to view the input document using manual control.
27. An apparatus comprising: a memory to store an input document; and a processor coupled with the memory to execute a a multimedia thumbnail generator to analyze the input document and extract a plurality of visual, audible, and audiovisual document elements from the input document and automatically generate a multimedia representation from one or more visual, audible, or audiovisual document elements automatically selected from extracted document elements from the input document based on one or more optimizing constraints and a user input, wherein the one or more optimizing constraints are utilized to maximize a total of information content provided by the selected document elements in a given amount of time, and comprise one or more characteristics of a device displaying a graphical user interface and one or more application constraints, wherein the automatic selection comprises calculating a time attribute and an information attribute for each of the extracted visual, audible, and audiovisual document elements and selecting one or more visual, audible, or audiovisual document elements based on each time attribute and each information attribute, wherein each time attribute is calculated, using one or more characteristics of a device that is to display the multimedia representation, to determine a minimum presentation time for a user to comprehend each of the extracted visual, audible, and audiovisual document elements, and wherein each information attribute is calculated, using the one or more application constraints, to determine an amount of information content that is contained in each of the extracted visual, audible, and audiovisual document elements, and wherein the automatic selection of two or more of the extracted visual, audible, or audiovisual document elements to maximize the total of information content provided by the selected visual, audible, or audiovisual document elements in the given amount of time, further comprises the processor configured to: select audible document elements that maximize an amount of information contained in the selected audible document elements when presented in one or more time intervals of an audible channel of the multimedia representation that have not been filled with audio data associated with the selected audiovisual elements, and fill the one or more time intervals of the audible channel with the selected audible document elements, and a graphical user interface, coupled to the multimedia thumbnail generator, to present the multimedia representation and to switch between the presentation of the multimedia representation and presentation of the input document under user control.