patti@hose2.hf.intel.com (Patti Beadles) (01/17/91)
In a past life, I did programming for a company that did a lot of
interactive video development using the IBM InfoWindow. Since then,
I've sort of lost track of multimedia in general, and IBM's role in
particular.
I'm curious as to whether or not anything interesting has happened
with the InfoWindow. Has it gone through any major changes? Are
there any good authoring systems available for it? (What authoring
systems does IBM sell now? A good deal of what I worked with was
pre-release, and I'm not sure what they actually were selling.) How
successful has it been as a product?
--
If I spoke for Intel, they'd have to pay me a whole lot more.
"It't not easy having a good time; even smiling makes my face hurt."
patti@hosehead.hf.intel.com ...or just yell "Hey, Patti!" Everybody else does.n8541751@unicorn.cc.wwu.edu (Where there is darkness, light) (01/18/91)
patti@hose2.hf.intel.com (Patti Beadles) writes: >In a past life, I did programming for a company that did a lot of >interactive video development using the IBM InfoWindow. Since then, >I've sort of lost track of multimedia in general, and IBM's role in >particular. >I'm curious as to whether or not anything interesting has happened >with the InfoWindow. Has it gone through any major changes? IBM has come out with a board for MCA machines (Models 50 and up) which lets you overlay video on a regular VGA monitor like the 8513. The board itself is really good, but the software that comes with it is InfoWindow compatible. For some reason, they kept the same scheme of communicating with it, involving a complex relation of commands and responses, as the InfoWindow. The basic operation of sending a command still involves building a large command string, full of oddities such as long signed integers, and words with the high byte sometimes preceeding the low byte, and other times following it, which are not convenient from most high level languages. You can run old InfoWindow applications on it, and you can create your own new ones which use more commands and do more and better things, but your stuck with an InfoWindow type interface to the new board, at least for now. The hardware itself is really good, and I've seen some beautiful applications run on it, but the software to control it is, at best, cumbersome. Kris Bruland. -- Kriston M. Bruland | . . . . . . . . . . n8541751@unicorn.cc.wwu.edu | . . . . . . . . . 8541751@nessie.cc.wwu.edu | . . . . . .
n8541751@unicorn.cc.wwu.edu (Where there is darkness, light) (01/18/91)
Sorry, I forgot to mention the name of the IBM InfoWindow compatible board in my first posting: it is the M-Motion board. Kris Bruland. -- Kriston M. Bruland | . . . . . . . . . . n8541751@unicorn.cc.wwu.edu | . . . . . . . . . 8541751@nessie.cc.wwu.edu | . . . . . .