Interactive multimedia documents: A modeling, authoring and rendering approach

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