Metawidgets For Multimodal Applications

We present a new approach to multimodal systems development that enables end-user applications to present information in alternative modalities, thereby making them useful even in situations where the default output modality is unacceptable to the user. We discuss the implementation of a software framework for constructing multimodal applications using the multimedia PCs that are available today, and outline our plans for the future continuation of this work. INTRODUCTION Advances in computer-human interface technology often lead to new interaction techniques which enable computers to better communicate with their human counterparts. Since their inception, computers have communicated primarily through visual displays. The recent explosion in multimedia systems, which adds sophisticated audio capabilities to the computer's output channels, allows today's users to not only see the information presented to them but to hear it as well. One of the challenges for developers of multimedia a..

A Visual Environment for Designing and Simulating Execution of Processor Arrays

Novis, a visual environment which supports the interactive development and animated simulation of special purpose parallel architectures, is presented. In sharp contrast with other systems which concentrate on the representation of parallelism within programs, Novis lets users design networks at an abstract level by placing processing elements into a connected grid of arbitrary (user selected) shape. The environment's underlying philosophy of maximal information hiding makes intimate familiarity on the part of the user with the details of low--level issues such as process schedule maintenance and event dispatching unnecessary. Layout violations and exceptions detected during execution simulation (e.g., deadlock) are automatically reported to the user. An overview of Novis's features is followed by examples that show off the environment's capabilities in a variety of useful applications. Introduction The most commonly used techniques for designing parallel array processors and for dev..

Novis: A Visual Laboratory for Exploring the Design of Processor Arrays

Novis, an experimental visual environment which supports the interactive development and animated simulation of special purpose parallel architectures, is presented. In sharp contrast with other systems which concentrate on the representation of parallelism within programs, Novis lets users design networks at an abstract level by placing processing elements into a connected grid of arbitrary (user selected) shape. The environment's underlying philosophy of maximal information hiding makes it unnecessary for the user to be intimately familiar with the details of low--level issues such as process schedule maintenance and event dispatching. Layout violations and exceptions detected during execution simulation (e.g., deadlock) are automatically reported to the user. An overview of Novis's features is followed by an example walk--through that imparts to the reader the feel of working in the environment. Considerations which influenced the design and implementation of the system are also dis..

Distributed Multi-Interface Computing with Polyglot

We introduce an architecture for multi-interface computing systems. Our architecture, based on distributed objects, allows networked presenters---programs providing user interfaces---to be connected to or disconnected from running applications. Furthermore, several presenters may be simultaneously attached to the same application, and they need not support the same user interface "style," so conforming applications can, without recoding, exploit new interface technologies, and third parties can introduce new user interfaces for applications. These capabilities are highly relevant to future systems, in which migratory programs (agents), mobile computing, and providing ubiquitous access for all users (including people with disabilities) are critical. We present a prototype implementation and example application (spreadsheet) to demonstrate the architecture's power, and discuss plans for future extensions. KEYWORDS: multi-interface environments, distributed computing, mobile computing, u..

Adaptive Multimedia Interfaces in PolyMestra

An architecture for a new generation of multimedia systems is presented based on the concept of metawidgets, which are collections of alternative representations for information, both within and across sensory modalities, along with user--transparent mechanisms for choosing among them. The proposed architecture allows us to overcome certain drawbacks of today's systems, where the designer typically must assign each component of the display to a specific modality in a fixed and inflexible manner. The design of the POLYMESTRA environment based on our architecture is next described in detail, with particular emphasis on the layered development approach, core software tools and inter--application communication. Finally, we discuss the current status of the implementation, and outline plans for distribution of the prototype later this year to get user feedback. KEYWORDS: multimedia systems, multimodal widgets, object oriented frameworks, C++ and STL. 1. INTRODUCTION Multimedia systems which..