Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM!nsb From: nsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein) Newsgroups: comp.mail.multi-media Subject: Re: A high-level language for animation & sound ?? Message-ID:Date: 3 Oct 89 13:49:34 GMT References: <1475@intercon.com> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: inet Organization: The Internet Lines: 24 > Anybody from CMU or BBN want to pipe up here :-)? Well, as an ex-CMU person, maybe I qualify. The reason I hadn't answered is that, frankly, I think the basic answer to this question is "No." As far as I know, there is no good high-level language for the portable expression of time-sequenced multimedia events such as animation and sound. Now, what probably made Amanda mention CMU and BBN is, of course, the fact that both Andrew and Diamond can represent such events in their datastreams. Indeed, both datastreams are even moderately portable. I know much more about Andrew, and can in fact attest that the Andrew data stream readily represents animations and sound, and could be easily extended to video (the extreme flexibility and extensibility of the Andrew model is one of Andrew's real strong suits, actually). The one word I sort of choked on, however, in my first paragraph, was the word "good." Even granting, for example, that PostScript is a "good" language for static imaging -- and I think there is some room for debate there -- we aren't even close to it for active processes. If you like PostScript, you could probably do a lot worse than to start with Display PostScript for such a language. In my opinion, however, the proper design of such languages is still very much a research question. -- Nathaniel Borenstein, Bell Communications Research