Both with regard to delivery and presentation the MPEG-4 proposal makes an attempt to delineate chunks of core fuctionality that may be shared between applications. With regard to presentation, SMIL may serve as an example. SMIL applications themselves already (re)use functionality from the basic set of XML-related technologies, for example to access the document structure through the DOM (Document Object Model). In addition, SMIL defines components that it may potentially share with other applications. For example, SMIL shares its animation facilities with SVG (the Scalable Vector Graphics format recommended by the Web Consortium).

The issue in sharing is, obviously, how to relate constructs in the syntax to their operational support. When it is possible to define a common base of operational support for a variety of multimedia applications we would approach our desired meta standard, it seems. A partial solution to this problem has been proposed in the now almost forgotten HyTime standard for time-based hypermedia. HyTime introduces the notion of architectural forms as a means to express the operational support needed for the interpretation of particular encodings, such as for example synchronization or navigation over bi-directional links. Apart from a base module, HyTime compliant architectures may include a units measurement module, a module for dealing with location addresses, a module to support hyperlinks, a scheduling module and a rendition module.

To conclude, wouldn't it be wonderful if, for example, animation support could be shared between rich media X3D and SMIL? Yes, it would! But as you may remember from the discussion on the timing models used by the various standards, there is still to much divergence to make this a realoistic option.

draft version 1 (16/5/2003)