The MHEG standard principles and examples of applications

This paper presents the main concepts of the ISO International Standard/ITU-T Recommendation for Multimedia/Hypermedia objects, prepared by the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG12 known as MHEG, as well as examples of the use of MHEG in different communicating environments. It presents the different approaches in the multimedia/hypermedia domain, leading to different possible levels of standardization. Each level corresponds to a different balance between Genericity and Specificity or adequation to a given application domain. The level of MHEG is a compromise between genericity across various application types, and support for a minimum set of basic, essential functionalities. The requirements are introduced and expressed in terms of synchronization/linking between elementary units of information, real time interchange and presentation. The MHEG standard is then introduced, and the way the MHEG specifications meet the application requirements is discussed. The specification process is accompanied by experiments and prototype developments.