Article Summary - MediaView - A General Multimedia Digital Publication System by Richard L. Phillips Group 2 Lauren Barton Robert Ryan Carolyn O'Hare Nelson Kile Martin Falck MediaView is a multimedia digital publication system that emphasizes communication. It has been designed to run specifically on NeXT computers. MediaView uses WYSIWYG for text and for its multimedia components. All components can be selected/cut/copied/pasted and printed. MediaView supports traditional multimedia formats such as graphics, audio and video as well as full-color images, object based animations; image- based animations, mathematics and custom dynamically loadable components. In addition, all multimedia documents can be mailed electronically to remote sites. This article goes on to explain the potential applications of MediaView, the general structure of MediaView, the different components of a MediaView document and a general idea of how to prepare a MediaView document. Future versions of MediaView will includes the following: hyperlinks, addition authoring tools, support for scientific file formats and the ability to run on other platforms such as the IBM RS/6000 family of computers. ================================================================ From: (Group 5) Shirley Carr Mike Joyce Zakia Khan Vas Madhava Article Summary (PHIL91a): MediaView: A General Multimedia Digital Publication System MediaView is an editable multimedia (MM) system built on Next computers. Unlike other MM systems, it emphasize communication over presentation. It has a WYSIWYG interface and is very easy to use. The primary window has both a summary view and a content view. The former is a scrolling list of of names of documents loaded in MediaView and the latter is the selected item. Three types of MM annotations are possible with MediaView: Post-It, Hear-It and Draw-It. MediaView allows for manipulating full color images including inserting miniatures of them into other documents. Pixel transformations can be done via a "digital darkroom." Video playback as well as capturing frames can be done. Applications for MediaView include: Education: for interactive textbooks. Science and Engineering: for visualization as well as use of Mathematica. Medicine: to keep patient records as well as photos, voice, etc. Law: to hold courtroom proceedings including text, audio and video. Administrative: Many, such as briefing documents to executives Training: CAD and training segments, etc. MediaView relies on the underlying Next environment and an application kit which contains a collection of 50 classes of commonly used graphical user interface objects. It is based on Objective C which is object oriented. Two classes within it that have been of great help are: (1) The responder class, which handles event responses and (2) the object class. MediaView is both a viewer and an authoring tool. There are six main areas to MediaView: 1) Text and searching: - It has a rich set of tools for editing, formatting, etc. - Searching can be done for sets of documents in the summary area. - You can also search through icons by dragging them to the search area. 2) Annotations for Text, Graphics and Sound - Read-It: Can be cut/pasted (not just the contents but allows for the entire read-it note) - Draw-It: gives graphics editing capability, including cut/paste of TIFF or PS data. - Hear-It: Allows for cut/paste of portions of sound patterns. 3) Animations: both object based and image based are supported. 4) Video - allows for playing, miniaturizing, and overlaying - supports a wide variety of players 5) Mathematica - can interface with it. 6) Custom components can be created from existing classes without access to source code. Future enhancements to MediaView include: - Adding hyperlink capability. - Adding more authoring tools, and to take advantage of loadable custom objects. - Support for scientific file formats, especially the HDF (Hierarchical Data Format) developed by NCSA and NetCDF developed by NASA. - Support for other platforms besides Next. The current plan is to also put it on IBM RS/6000 computers. ================================================================ MM Article Summaries by Group I: Fitzgerald, Kalafut, Klein, and Muhlenburg. "MediaView: A General Multimedia digital publication system" by Richard L. Phillips MediaView is designed to be flexible and unrestricted, and exploit NeXT's media-rich capabilities while emphasizing communication, not presentation. MediaView is easy to use and understand because it is based on the WYSIWYG word processing metaphor extended to non-textual media. One communication aspect is allowing multimedia documents to be electronically mailed to remote sites. MediaView is basically just a template for document management with the basic summary view, content view, and annotations. MediaView's potential applications include education, science and engineering, medicine, law, administration, training, and entertainment. NeXT's Application Kit and Interface Builder were instrumental in building MediaView. The 2 most important classes used in MediaView's implementation are the Object class and the Responder class. MediaView document components include text and searching by dragging icons to the search fields; annotations of 3 types - textual, graphical, and audio; object data-based and image-based animations; video supported by NeXT's dimension subsystem's I/O capabilities; mathematical equations; and custom components which need to be dynamically loaded. MediaView and its "drag and drop" strategy facilitates authoring a document including text capture and formatting, line art and images, annotations, animations, and scanning. The future of MediaView includes hyperlinks, additional authoring tools, support for scientific file formats, and implementations on other platforms.