An authoring and run-time environment for interactive multimedia services

This paper focuses on emerging standards for the application layer of an interactive multimedia terminal equipment, including interoperable application interchange formats and high-layer client/server protocol stacks, by presenting architectural guidelines and practical results obtained by experimental implementations in the context of the MUSIST (ACTS AC010) project. MUSIST aims at evaluating the capabilities of proposed standards (ISO/DAVIC), as well as their possible integration within a more open framework including, of course, Internet/Web technologies. The current status and results of such assessment activity are reported in the present paper. The functional specification and the software architecture of a visual authoring tool and a run-time engine, compliant to the DAVIC 1.0 and ISO MHEG-5 standards, are specifically addressed.