Dick Bulterman
head department Convergent Media CWI
Abstract of the presentation
Multimedia documents designed for distribution across a mixed desktop/mobile environment will typically need to provide multiple sets of media assets, each tuned for the intended distribution platform. A simple example may be that a video fragment intended for the desktop may need to be replaced by a slideshow for a mobile device. While several standards exist for negotiating content based on capabilities at runtime, there is no uniform mechanism that can be used in the context of content authoring at development time. At development time, a virtual device model is typically used rather than a physical device; as a result, programmed solutions that query device and network characteristics are not appropriate. As an alternative,this paper describes the GSX language. GSX is an XML language for specifying environment properties for use during presentation authoring. We define the language and then illustrate how it can be used to specify various system properties so that an authoring system can effectively model an expected distribution environment. We also discuss implementation experience with GSX with the AMBULANT open source SMIL 2.0 player developed at CWI.
Bio:
Dr. Dick C.A. Bulterman is head of the department Convergent Media at CWI, the Dutch national Centre for Computer Science and Mathematics, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Before rejoining CWI in 2002, he was managing director and CTO of Oratrix Development BV, a CWI technology transfer company specializing in authoring systems for complex multimedia presentations. Prior to joining CWI, Bulterman was on the faculty of Brown University, in Providence RI (USA). He has also head part-time faculty appointments at the University of Utrecht, Delft University and Leiden University.
Dr. Bulterman was one of the principal architects of the W3C SMIL 2.0 language. He was written extensively on SMIL and other aspects of distributed multimedia services. In May 2004, he published the book SMIL 2.0: Interactive Multimedia for Web and Mobile Devices. He was written over 70 research articles and has presenting work at leading conferences world-wide.
Bulterman received his Ph.D. in 1982 from Brown University based on research on the animation of parallel and distributed architectures. He received a Master’s degree from Brown in 1977 and an undergraduate degree in political economics and mathematics from Hope College in 1973.
Events: Evolving standards