Formal specification and prototyping of multimedia applications

Multimedia systems incorporating hyperlinks and user interaction can be prototyped using TAOML, an extension of HTML. TAOML is used to define a Teleaction Object (TAO) which is a multimedia object with associated hypergraph structure and knowledge structure. The hypergraph structure supports the effective presentation and efficient communication of multimedia information. In this paper, a formal specification methodology for TAOs using Symbol Relation (SR) grammars is described. An attributed SR grammar is then introduced in order to associate knowledge with the TAO. The limitations to achieve an efficient parser are given. The grammatical formalism allows for validation and verification of the system specification. This methodology provides a principled approach to specify, verify, validate and prototype multimedia applications.