A Component-based Extensible Multimedia System

Applications and user interfaces contain more and more multimedia parts what leads to a disappearance of the separation between multimedia documents and multimedia applications. The expansion of the notion multimedia document to comprise application specific functionality leads to the requirement for an adequate model and specification language for multimedia presentations. An adequate model allows the specification of application specific presentations (e.g. computer-based training or interactive TV). While current document specification languages focus on the temporal and spatial layout of multimedia documents this paper proposes a component-oriented extensible multimedia system that allows reuse of once developed language extensions for particular application areas. The transfer format used for storing and transmitting documents over the network describes both the document itself and the configuration of the presentation system. A platform-independent realization of the presentation system in Java and an XML-based transfer format care for dissemination of application specific documents over the Internet.