Issues - AC

From the Outline, this Unit deals with: architectures / reference models (e.g., IMA), toolkits, and authoring systems. In particular, that includes: AuthorWare, Director, and Virtual Reality. Thus, here is a chance to bring together the many concepts considered throughout the semester, and to see software systems that allow producing a multimedia application. These were demonstrated in class and through the field trip.

Chapter 3 deals with standards, frameworks for multimedia services, and architectures for achieving end-to-end synchronization. Thus, it abstracts all of the multimedia systems and topics considered during the course. Chapter 12 deals with systems for presentation of multimedia information and for authoring, showing where we stand now.

Authorware is a multimedia authoring language which allows for rapid development of interactive multimedia software. It is icon-based; programming is done by placing icons onto a flowline in a particular order. Thus, it is much easier for "non-programmers" to produce multimedia software with Authorware than with traditional programming languages, like C. (However, certain functions that can be performed in traditional languages, like binary file access and complex calculations, cannot be performed in Authorware, and require the use of low-level functions written in other langauges.)