Interactive multimedia documents: a modeling, authoring and rendering approach

In this paper we present our research and development experience in the context of Interactive Multimedia Documents (IMDs). We define a rich model for such documents covering the issues of interaction and spatiotemporal compositions as means of representing the functionality of an IMD. We exploit the event concept to represent interaction, while complex interactions are covered by a rich algebraic and spatiotemporal event composition scheme. Based on the model we implemented an authoring methodology. Thereafter we present a generic framework for rendering (presenting) IMDs putting emphasis to the handling of interaction and to the temporal synchronization of media objects. The rendering system is implemented as a client-server architecture using Java and accompanying technologies. The implementation is suitable for WWW enabled interactive multimedia documents.