sean@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Sean McLinden) (05/29/89)
Please excuse the general and seemingly ignorant nature of this request. There was, recently, report to comp.graphics a summary of workstation hadrware to allow video (analog) to be included in a workstation display (even within an X-based window). It occurred to me as I was reading this that this was, in fact, a suboptimal solution, in the sense that that what one would really like is not an integrated display, but a format for an integrated multimedia file that could be exchanged between sites much like mail or file transfer currently occurs. The difficulty is only in part, to get the information from one place to another. The more significant problem is how to create links between various forms of data that reflect knowledge about the world. The question, then, is what do people see as being the most realistic short (5-10 years) and intermediate (10-20 years) term solutions to the problem of multimedia record exchange? Will it be a migration to an entirely digital medium (digital video), or will we move toward multimodal networks which support separate analog and digital signals (ISDN? FDDI-II?)? I'm not looking so much for futuristic predictions as I am for real world facts, documents, references, etc., as to what people are working on as approaches to this problem. Specifically, I am not looking at the higher level associations such as might be captured by a hypermedia format or a markup language, but what will be the physical layers, networks, and filesystem structures that will support these higher level systems. The purpose of this request is to attempt to develop a rational policy for the acquisition of equipment and technology for a large academic medical center which is actively involved in research into new forms for dynamic patient records. If a discussion of this subject is not appropriate to this newsgroup, please feel free to E-mail me your comments and opinions and I'll be happy to summarize for anyone who has an interest. Sean McLinden Decision Systems Laboratory University of Pittsburgh
kdb@intercon.uucp (05/31/89)
I also would be intersted in information about what people think the direction multi-media mail/OS/etc is going to take. But I would also very much like to know is what projects are currently under development. Please send Email and I will summarize the responses. -- sig