A system for developing distributed interactive multimedia applications is presented.
A multimedia object model, which organizes the objects' characteristics in statuses, is defined. Each status combines a small part of the object's internal behaviour, the actions related with its functions and the events the object can send to the exterior to announce changes in its state.
All the concepts related with the multimedia objects are typed, with the relevant information being stored in a database. Therefore, all the applications and tools in the system know the possibilities available at any moment, allowing for system expansibility, and for consistency checks at each step of application development.
A language based on the CSP process algebra is defined, and used to specify multimedia applications. A graphical editor for the generation of applications in that language is described. This editor allows fast and easy application building by composing the available objects, and the author does not need the technical knowledge related with the language.
Finally, a compiler which converts the application specification in that language into a synchronization manager is described. The synchronization manager is based on a state machine in order to maximize the performance, and orchestrates the progress of the multimedia application.
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