- Email: [email protected]
Guest editors' introduction
Comput & Graphics Vol. 17, No. 3, top. 201-203, 1993
0097-8493/93 $6.00 + .00 © 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd.
Printed in Great Britain.
Multimedia
GUEST EDITORS' INTRODUCTION Multimedia is one of the widest spread buzzwords today and is supposed to represent one of the coining trends of computer science in the '90s. After the first generation of batch-oriented, commandline driven, character-oriented computing and the second generation, which may be characterized as interactive, graphics-oriented computing, we are today on the threshold of a new, third, generation. The increasing bandwidth and new services of telecommunication networks will allow establishment of interactive cooperative work groups. User interfaces will develop towards virtual reality. Workstations will receive integrated communication and computing devices. The structure of the processed information will contain links and references to other entities, leading to hyperdocuments. All in all, interactive computer graphics will evolve into cooperative hypermedia computing. The Eurographics Association was and is organizing international workshops addressing multimedia, the first being held in Stockholm in 1991, the second in Darmstadt, on 4-5 May 1992, concentrating on Experiences, Hyperstructure Concepts, and Cooperative Work. This special issue presents the best papers of the above-mentioned second EG Workshop on Multimedia and an invited paper. Alty, Bergan, Craufurd, and Dolphin report on a series of experiments using different combinations of multimedia interfaces. Different combinations of media are compared and the multimedia support at development and usage time of a system is analyzed. V~i~in~inendiscusses user interfaces in hypermedia systems. This paper focuses on the presentation of and interaction with structures in multimedia and hypermedia systems and for cooperating work groups. Herzner and Kummer present a concept for dealing with time variant multimedia documents. The authors have added multimedia components and a layout editor for synchronization to a conventional documentprocessing tool. Owen, Morris, and Fraser describe the development of a low cost hypermedia training system for a water treatment plant and the experiences gathered. Kirste presents an interactive hypermedia satellite archival system. This systems provides advanced mechanisms for the navigation through information based on images. The paper by Santos describes the conceptualization and realization of a cooperative hypermedia editing architecture. This tool supports both conferencing and computing in an integrated distributed environment. Girod gives an overview about scalable video for multimedia workstations. He proposes the concept of resolution hierarchies to build scalable video codecs. This is an invited paper and was not presented at the EUROGRAPHICS workshop. The papers published here give an overview of different aspects of multimedia. We hope this work will initiate discussions on the topic in a broad sense. Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Wilhelminenstr. 7 6 1O0 Darmstadt German);
WOLFGANG HI3BNER CHRISTOPH HORNUNG
Guest Editors
201
202
W. HUBNERand C. HORNUNG
Wolfgang Hiibner
CURRICULUM VITAE Woifgang Hiibner received his university degree in Computer Science from the Darmstadt Technical University. From 1984 to 1985 he was a research assistant, first with the Interactive Graphics Systems Group of the Department of Computer Science at the Darmstadt Technical University, where he worked on graphics standards and validation concepts for the certification of graphics systems. From 1985 to 1989 he worked as a research assistant at the Computer Graphics Center ZGDV. His main research topics were graphics user interfaces and multimedia. He was in charge of several R & D projects involving the design and realisation of the User Interface Toolkits THESEUS and THESEUS + + and the User Interface Management System IAMBUS. In May 1990, he received his Ph.D. from Darmstadt Technical University's Department of Computer Science. In this work, an object-oriented interaction model for the isolation and specification of functional and descriptive components of graphics interactions as well as their interdependencies within graphics user interfaces were developed and, hence, user interface tools derived. From 1990 to 1992 he was head of the department "Multimedia and Interaction" at the Computer Graphics Center ZGDV. He was responsible for R & D projects on multimedia, hypermedia, advanced user interfaces, virtual reality and technical documentation with standards like SGML. Many of the resulting systems become international products like INES (Integrated Norm--Editor based on SGML), HyperPicture (Hypermediasystem ftir multimediale Daten) or ShareME (Authoring System for Shared Multimedia Environments). Furthermore he established and directed the Z G D V - - L a b "A Center for Media & Vision." Since 1993 he works as a consultant for computer graphics, multimedia and technical documentation at Roland Berger & Partner in Frankfurt, Germany. Dr. Hfibner is co-author of the book THESEUSJDie Benutzungsoberfl(iche der UniBase--Softwareentwicklungsumgebung (Springer, 1987) and author of the book Entwurfgraphischer Benutzerschnittstellen (Springer, 1990). He is also author of about 50 articles concerning topics in computer graphics. Since 1993 he is an Associate Editor of Computer & Graphics and responsible for the topics of advanced interaction, new dialogue paradigms, multimedia, hypermedia, and virtual reality.
Guest editors' introduction
Christoph Hornung
CURRICULUM VITAE Dr. Christoph Hornung received his university diploma in Computer Science at the University of Saarbrficken in 1976. From 1979 to 1984 he worked as a research assistant at the Computer Graphics Institute of Prof. Encarnaq~o at the Technical University of Darmstadt in the field of visibility algorithms and display algorithms for NURB curves and surfaces. Dr. Hornung made his Ph.D. on the development and implementation of a visibility method having minimal algorithmic complexity and research on how to distribute this method on multi-processor systems. In 1981, 1984, and 1989 Dr. Hornung received best-paper awards of the Eurographics Association for contributions about visibility algorithms and lighting and shading methods. Beside his academic career, Dr. Hornung has worked several years in industry. With AEG ( 19761978), he developed a 2-D interactive graphical system. With K AE (1984-1987), Dr. Hornung was responsible for the development of an interactive system for modelling 3D-objects and landscapes as the application data base for a real-time simulator system. During his time with Nixdorf (1987-1989), he was responsible for the design of a graphics accelerator for workstations. Since July 1989, Dr. Hornung has been head of the Multimedia Systems division and, since 1992, head of the Cooperative HyperMedia Systems department at FhG-IGD. He is responsible for projects in the areas of cooperative work, multimedia, structural information presentation, distributed rendering, hardware design for graphics and video. His major research interests and experiences are in the field of graphics software and hardware, distributed algorithms, cooperative work, and hypermedia.
203
0097-8493/93 $6.00 + .00 © 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd.
Printed in Great Britain.
Multimedia
GUEST EDITORS' INTRODUCTION Multimedia is one of the widest spread buzzwords today and is supposed to represent one of the coining trends of computer science in the '90s. After the first generation of batch-oriented, commandline driven, character-oriented computing and the second generation, which may be characterized as interactive, graphics-oriented computing, we are today on the threshold of a new, third, generation. The increasing bandwidth and new services of telecommunication networks will allow establishment of interactive cooperative work groups. User interfaces will develop towards virtual reality. Workstations will receive integrated communication and computing devices. The structure of the processed information will contain links and references to other entities, leading to hyperdocuments. All in all, interactive computer graphics will evolve into cooperative hypermedia computing. The Eurographics Association was and is organizing international workshops addressing multimedia, the first being held in Stockholm in 1991, the second in Darmstadt, on 4-5 May 1992, concentrating on Experiences, Hyperstructure Concepts, and Cooperative Work. This special issue presents the best papers of the above-mentioned second EG Workshop on Multimedia and an invited paper. Alty, Bergan, Craufurd, and Dolphin report on a series of experiments using different combinations of multimedia interfaces. Different combinations of media are compared and the multimedia support at development and usage time of a system is analyzed. V~i~in~inendiscusses user interfaces in hypermedia systems. This paper focuses on the presentation of and interaction with structures in multimedia and hypermedia systems and for cooperating work groups. Herzner and Kummer present a concept for dealing with time variant multimedia documents. The authors have added multimedia components and a layout editor for synchronization to a conventional documentprocessing tool. Owen, Morris, and Fraser describe the development of a low cost hypermedia training system for a water treatment plant and the experiences gathered. Kirste presents an interactive hypermedia satellite archival system. This systems provides advanced mechanisms for the navigation through information based on images. The paper by Santos describes the conceptualization and realization of a cooperative hypermedia editing architecture. This tool supports both conferencing and computing in an integrated distributed environment. Girod gives an overview about scalable video for multimedia workstations. He proposes the concept of resolution hierarchies to build scalable video codecs. This is an invited paper and was not presented at the EUROGRAPHICS workshop. The papers published here give an overview of different aspects of multimedia. We hope this work will initiate discussions on the topic in a broad sense. Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Wilhelminenstr. 7 6 1O0 Darmstadt German);
WOLFGANG HI3BNER CHRISTOPH HORNUNG
Guest Editors
201
202
W. HUBNERand C. HORNUNG
Wolfgang Hiibner
CURRICULUM VITAE Woifgang Hiibner received his university degree in Computer Science from the Darmstadt Technical University. From 1984 to 1985 he was a research assistant, first with the Interactive Graphics Systems Group of the Department of Computer Science at the Darmstadt Technical University, where he worked on graphics standards and validation concepts for the certification of graphics systems. From 1985 to 1989 he worked as a research assistant at the Computer Graphics Center ZGDV. His main research topics were graphics user interfaces and multimedia. He was in charge of several R & D projects involving the design and realisation of the User Interface Toolkits THESEUS and THESEUS + + and the User Interface Management System IAMBUS. In May 1990, he received his Ph.D. from Darmstadt Technical University's Department of Computer Science. In this work, an object-oriented interaction model for the isolation and specification of functional and descriptive components of graphics interactions as well as their interdependencies within graphics user interfaces were developed and, hence, user interface tools derived. From 1990 to 1992 he was head of the department "Multimedia and Interaction" at the Computer Graphics Center ZGDV. He was responsible for R & D projects on multimedia, hypermedia, advanced user interfaces, virtual reality and technical documentation with standards like SGML. Many of the resulting systems become international products like INES (Integrated Norm--Editor based on SGML), HyperPicture (Hypermediasystem ftir multimediale Daten) or ShareME (Authoring System for Shared Multimedia Environments). Furthermore he established and directed the Z G D V - - L a b "A Center for Media & Vision." Since 1993 he works as a consultant for computer graphics, multimedia and technical documentation at Roland Berger & Partner in Frankfurt, Germany. Dr. Hfibner is co-author of the book THESEUSJDie Benutzungsoberfl(iche der UniBase--Softwareentwicklungsumgebung (Springer, 1987) and author of the book Entwurfgraphischer Benutzerschnittstellen (Springer, 1990). He is also author of about 50 articles concerning topics in computer graphics. Since 1993 he is an Associate Editor of Computer & Graphics and responsible for the topics of advanced interaction, new dialogue paradigms, multimedia, hypermedia, and virtual reality.
Guest editors' introduction
Christoph Hornung
CURRICULUM VITAE Dr. Christoph Hornung received his university diploma in Computer Science at the University of Saarbrficken in 1976. From 1979 to 1984 he worked as a research assistant at the Computer Graphics Institute of Prof. Encarnaq~o at the Technical University of Darmstadt in the field of visibility algorithms and display algorithms for NURB curves and surfaces. Dr. Hornung made his Ph.D. on the development and implementation of a visibility method having minimal algorithmic complexity and research on how to distribute this method on multi-processor systems. In 1981, 1984, and 1989 Dr. Hornung received best-paper awards of the Eurographics Association for contributions about visibility algorithms and lighting and shading methods. Beside his academic career, Dr. Hornung has worked several years in industry. With AEG ( 19761978), he developed a 2-D interactive graphical system. With K AE (1984-1987), Dr. Hornung was responsible for the development of an interactive system for modelling 3D-objects and landscapes as the application data base for a real-time simulator system. During his time with Nixdorf (1987-1989), he was responsible for the design of a graphics accelerator for workstations. Since July 1989, Dr. Hornung has been head of the Multimedia Systems division and, since 1992, head of the Cooperative HyperMedia Systems department at FhG-IGD. He is responsible for projects in the areas of cooperative work, multimedia, structural information presentation, distributed rendering, hardware design for graphics and video. His major research interests and experiences are in the field of graphics software and hardware, distributed algorithms, cooperative work, and hypermedia.
203