GB2375631A

GB2375631A - System for developing an interactive application

Info

Publication number: GB2375631A
Application number: GB0205136A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Neil Cashman; Scott Walker; Walter Perotto
Original assignee: DIGITAL INTERACTIVE BROADBAND
Current assignee: DIGITAL INTERACTIVE BROADBAND
Priority date: 2001-03-06
Filing date: 2002-03-05
Publication date: 2002-11-20
Anticipated expiration: 2022-03-05
Also published as: GB0105583D0; GB0205136D0; GB2375631B; WO2002071212A1; WO2002071212A8

Abstract

A system for developing an interactive application that can provide output in different formats to suit different target platforms is disclosed and includes a controller 6 configured with an interactive authoring tool, an interactive content project file 30 to store a generic application definition and an interpreter 32 for converting the application definition into at least one application for a platform selected from a plurality of platforms. The controller/authoring tool (i) requests delivery parameters e.g. delivery bandwidth, carousel ordering and timing and database locations from a user, (ii) provides the user with a plurality of common interactive elements e.g. buttons, list boxes, (iii) enables the selective importation of specific resources e.g. images, text, and (iv) generates the generic application definition. The system may be used to generate interactive content to accompany television broadcasts.

Description

G:\SECDATA\MJB\GOINTER\77702.WPD

SYSTEM FOR DEVELOPING

AN INTERACTIVE APPLICATION

The present invention relates to a development apparatus and a method of developing an interactive application.

Increasingly, there is the need to develop interactive television content and applications to accompany television broadcast channels. However, there is a problem 10 that television programs are being transmitted in a number of different formats, such that it is necessary to develop interactive applications for a variety of different output formats so as to suit different target platforms.

Thus, it is necessary for interactive content to be developed for a particular interactive service delivery platform and then, if a new platform is targeted, the 15 interactive content has to be recreated specifically for the new platform.

According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of developing an interactive application including: requesting delivery parameters from the user; providing the user with a plurality of selectable common interactive elements; 20 enabling selective importation of specific resources; generating a generic application definition; storing, in an interactive content project file, the generic application definition; and converting the generic application definition into at least one application for a 25 platform selected from a plurality of interactive platforms.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is also provided a development system for an interactive application including: a controller responsive to a user input and for driving a display, the controller

being configured with an interactive authoring tool so as to (i) request delivery parameters from the user, (ii) provide the user with a plurality of selectable common interactive elements, (iii) enable selective importation of specific resources and (iv) generate a generic application definition; 5 an interactive content project file in which to store the generic application definition; and an interpreter for converting the generic application definition into at least one application for a platform selected from a plurality of interactive platforms.

In this way, an interactive content design may be captured and its final 10 implementation selected from one or more target platforms. The user may define the delivery parameters and introduce additional resources specific to the application under development, but then use common interactive elements to build up a generic application definition which can be converted into any required target platform.

Preferably, the delivery parameters include service parameters, carousel statistics 15 and database links.

The input service parameters may include application delivery band width, carousel ordering and timing, location (database) of application resources. The composition of a carousel influences the way an application behaves and accesses resources on the carousel itself. The statistics can quantify, in 20 relation to the carousel's structure, the max. min and average values for key aspects of the application. Example key aspects are: boot-up time, waiting time for resources, transition time between screens, perceived and objective latency.

Thus, the user may define the requirements of any resulting specific application.

25 Preferably, the common interactive elements include buttons, list boxes, video controls and presentation/background templates.

The authoring tool thus allows the user to construct an application from the

-3 common interactive elements, but including resources according to the requirement of the application.

The specific resources may include one or more of text, images and graphics.

Preferably, the controller determines whether the application is realisable with 5 the selected resources given the selected platform and delivery parameters and alerts the user to any problems.

In this way, if a user attempts to integrate resources into the application which are incompatible with the platform or delivery parameters, a warning is given so as to allow the user to revise the resource.

10 Preferably, the controller builds the generic application using the selected common interactive elements, determines if the layouts and behaviours defined by those elements conform to the platform capabilities and alerts the user to any problems.

Thus, even using the common interactive elements, it is possible for a user to construct a generic application which is not compatible with the selected platform. In 15 this way, the user is warned and, hence, can revise the application under development.

Preferably, the interpreter determines the API's to which the application is to be exported, determines whether or not the plug-ins are available for the API's and alerts the user to input any plug-ins which are not available. Thus, when the interpreter attempts to convert the generic application definition into a specific application, it first 20 determines whether or not all the plug-ins are available to it to construct the required interactive application. If they are not available, the interpreter gives the user the opportunity to load additional plug- ins from an external source.

Preferably, the interpreter includes look-up tables containing parameters and functions so as to convert from the generic application into required specific 25 applications.

Hence, the look-up table is constructed in advance in accordance with the common interactive elements such that the interpreter is able to convert from the generic

r l -4 application definition into any of the predetermined platforms.

Preferably, the interpreter notifies the user of any problems in conversion.

Thus, once again, the user is given an opportunity to revise the application under development. 5 Preferably, the interpreter selectively displays a preview of the generic application when converted to any selected specific application.

It will be appreciated that, due to the different characteristics of different platforms, the generic application may appear differently when in its different specific application forms. Some of these different forms may be unacceptable to a developer.

10 Hence, by providing the preview, the interpreter allows the application developer to check the specific application and make any revisions as necessary.

Viewed from anoteh aqspect the invention provides a computer readable storage medium having recorded thereon code components that, when loaded on data processing means and executed, will cause that data processing means to operate according to the 1 S method and system described above.

An embodiment of the invention will now be described by way of example only, and with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: Figure 1 illustrates schematically a development tool according to the present invention; 20 Figure 2 illustrates a flow diagram for the authoring process; and Figure 3 illustrates a flow diagram for the interpretation process.

An interactive content author is provided with some form of display 2 and input device 4. These can take any form appropriate for displaying the development of the interactive application and allowing input from the author. They might be of the form of 25 a conventional personal computer or form part of broadcasting studio apparatus.

As illustrated, the display 2 and user input 4 interact with a controller 6 embodying an interactive content authoring tool.

-s - The authoring tool is arranged to provide to the author, by means of the display 2, the supply of simple authoring tools, together with various tips and guidelines for assisting the author in the development of the application. In particular, these allow non-

specialised personnel (non-programmers) to create interactive content, for instance idea 5 capture, addition of resources (images/text) addition of behaviour etc. Control is achieved by means of the input 4.

The authoring tool 6 also provides a library of common interactive content elements, such as buttons 8, list boxes 10, video control 12 and presentation/background

templates 14. These provide the author with a selection of predetermined features which 10 may be manipulated to create the desired application. Other custom content elements 16 may also be provided.

A library is collection of objects to be used by some software. In general, libraries can be enlarged and customised by adding new objects to them; these new objects can be created either by the user of the software or by the company which 15 created the library.

In order to generate a particular interactive application, the authoring tool also allows input of specific project interactive content elements or resources such as images 18, text 20 or graphics 22. These are provided by the author to the authoring tool and may be available from an external data base or memory.

20 Thus, by combining the common interactive content elements as arranged by the author with the specific project resources provided by the author, the authoring tool is able to create a definition of a generic application.

With regard to the use of the interactive application, the authoring tool also requests from the author, the required delivery parameters, for instance the carousel 25 statistics 24, the service parameters 26 and the data base links 28. The service parameters are described here as part of the delivery parameters. However, the delivery parameters and the service parameters can be considered to be the same thing. The

-6 service parameters include application delivery band width, carousel ordering and timing, location (data base) of application resources. Carousel statistics are not part of parameters but they are calculated from parameters. The statistics can quantify, in relation to the carousel's structure, the max. min and average values for 5 key aspects of the application. Example key aspects are: boot-up time, waiting time for resources, transition time between screens, perceived and objective latency.

As illustrated, the definition of the generic application as formed by the authoring tool is stored in an interactive content project file 30. As also illustrated, an 10 intelligent interpreter 32 is provided. The interpreter 32 is able to retrieve the generic application definition stored in the project file 30 and to convert this definition into an interactive application according to any number of predetermined platforms requested by the author. For instance, as illustrated in Figure 1, the interpreter 32 may create specific applications for specific platforms such as open TV, MHEG, Java-HTML etc. In order 15 to achieve this, as will be described below, the interpreter is provided with look- up tables for parameters and functions enabling it to translate the generic application definition into a specific application. The interpreter also provides feedback to the interactive content authoring tool. This allows the development tool as a whole to provide previews of specific platform content, in other words to allow a "look-and-feel" 20 evaluation of the interactive application. In particular, since different platforms will have different characteristics, the preview illustrates how a particular part of the interactive application is represented in a specific platform.

By means of the feedback, the interpreter 32 may also list any modifications which have been made in interpreting the generic content to the specific content, list any 25 interpretation problems (for instance a target platform cannot provide the requested functionality) and indicate any performance data for the specific platform environment.

In this way, the user is given complete information regarding the conversion process and

t -7 any changes or factors influencing the conversion to the specific application.

The system may be provided with a performance evaluation facility which allows a variety of carousel arrangements to be evaluated in conjunction with given delivery bandwidths (and size of the interactive content created), before and after specific 5 platform targeting. As illustrated in Figurel, performance evaluation occurs in the link between intelligent interpreter 32 and I-content authoring 6. The main point of evaluating performance is to make sure that the application will run well enough on the target platform and with the given bandwidth. The main values to evaluate are boot-up time, latency between screens and download time of resources; they have to satisfy both 10 the consumer's expectations and the broadcaster's requirements. The same application can be delivered in different scenarios and the tool will allow repeating evaluation in each case.

A database link may be used to allow selective resources to be stored remotely from the interactive application, but remain easily traceable for streaming and 15 maintenance. For example, for an application which shows a catalogue, pictures, text description and price will describe every catalogue item. The information for all

catalogue items is contained in a database. When developing the application, the user of the invention will be able to specify a connection to that database, and let the authoring tool take pictures, text and prices from there and insert them in specified points of the 20 application. If a new item is added to the catalogue, its data is inserted in the database without modifying the application, which will have the ability to get the new data dynamically. By adding new interpreters, for instance by way of supplementing the look-up tables, it is possible to retarget the interactive content to new platforms. The interactive 25 content design is retained in the generic project file as the generic definition.

The process of authoring is illustrated by way of a flow diagram in Figure 2.

In step 100, the author first selects the platforms to which the application will be

- - ported. In step 102, the author then inputs the delivery parameters for each platform.

By inputting the required platforms and delivery parameters, the authoring tool is able to check that the application under development is compatible with the environment in which it is to be used.

5 Thus, in step 104, the author selects the required resources for the application and, in step 106, the authoring tool determines whether or not the application is realisable using the selected resources with the required delivery parameters.

If the application is not realisable, then in step 108, the authoring tool informs the author of problems with the application and prompts the user to change the parameters 10 or resources as selected. Hence, the process returns to step 102.

If the application is realisable, then at 1 10 the authoring tool responds to inputs from the user to build the application using selected templates to provide the required layouts and behaviours of the application.

A template is a file containing the general characteristics of a particular type of 15 application. A user of the invention can edit a template and personalise it for a specific purpose. For example, there may be templates for quiz shows, catalogue, news. A user who has to create an interactive application for a particular quiz show will take the 'quiz show template' and edit it. A template will contain default information concerning layout (how different graphic objects are placed on different screens) and behaviour (what 20 different object do upon user interaction, e.g. what a particular button does when selected). The user can modify both default layout and behaviour of the template to meet his particular need of the moment. The advantage of introducing template is that the work required modifying them for a particular use is less then what would be required developing an application from scratch. A check is carried out at 112.

25 The authoring tool then checks whether or not the selected layouts and behaviours conform to the platform capabilities. If they do not, the process proceeds to step 1 14 and the user is warned of potential problems. Although not illustrated, as this

-9 - step, the user is also able to revise the layouts and behaviours until the authoring tool finds no problems.

Finally, in step 116, the authoring tool builds a generic project file/application using the resources etc. 5 Each project file is a binary file containing all the information concerning an application. The necessary infomnation is described in the previous paragraphs: parameters, layout and behaviour. The particular binary format of the file can be of any suitable definition The process conducted by the interpreter 32 is illustrated in Figure 3.

10 In step 200, the interpreter first opens the generic application product file 30.

In step 202, it detemmines the file format and in step 204, it determines the API to which the application is to be exported.

As mentioned above, a project file is written in a particular predefined binary format. The same software could support more than one binary fommat (e.g. java or xml, 15 as shown in the Figures). When opening the project file, the software examines the contents of it to determine if it is a supported format and which one. Once the file is opened, the software will then determine which is the target API, either from information within the file itself or from user.

In step 206, the interpreter determines whether the plug-ins for the chosen API 20 are available. Without these plug-ins, the interpreter is not able to produce the required specific application. Therefore, in step 208, it alerts the user. At this point, although not illustrated, the user can load the appropriate plug-ins from an external source or, alternatively, choose a different API. In any event, the process returns to step 204.

If the required plug-ins are available, the process continues with steps 210 and 25 212 in which the generic application is converted to the specific application. As indicated, this is achieved by means of look-up tables for the various parameters and iimctions defined in the generic application so as to provide the actual code required for

-10 the specific application.

Steps 210 and 212 can be considered to be part of the sane process. The project file is processed to generate source code in a given language for a given platform. The project file is examined and the application for the target platform is generated using a 5 mixture of compilation algorithms (implement the required behaviour) and look-up tables (to translate from the project file format to the specific format required). An example of use of all this is where a button is required to appear on a screen. The project file would contain the indication that a button has to appear with a certain graphic appearance and doing a certain behaviour when selected. The algorithm will detect that a 10 button is required for, e.g., the API called OpenTV. The button will have to display a bitmap and play a sound when selected. The algorithm will then use a lool<-up table, which for 'button' will return the particular code used by OpenTV to implement a button.

This code will have placeholders for the bitmap and the behaviour to implement. The algorithm will use the look-up table again to obtain the code to display a bitmap, will 15 convert the bitmap to the format used by OpenTV and will insert the result instead of the bitmap placeholder. The same process is applied recursively to the button behaviour.

In step 214, the interpreter determines whether or not there are any problems with the conversion and, if so, in step 216, notifies the user of these problems. At the same time, the interpreter can also provide a list of modifications it has made in 20 interpreting the generic content to the specific content.

In step 218, the interpreter notifies the user of any performance issues with regard to the resulting specific application and the delivery parameters.

In step 220, it is determined whether or not the user has requested a preview of the converted application. If so, in step 222, a preview is displayed for the user, for 25 instance by means of the controller 6.

Finally, in step 224, the interactive application is saved ready for deployment.

In conclusion, as an example, a content provider might wish to provide a service,

l -11 such as a travel catalogue, on two different networks, offering two different abstraction layers, such as open TV and MHEG. Rather than carry out two different projects, the authoring tool allows a common application project file to be created in which the look and feel, the design, the graphic aspect and the behaviour are engineered once and for 5 all. The development tool has the necessary knowledge and tools to create a source file for a selection of predetermined platforms from the project file, adapting the resources format (e.g. converting images to a specific format used by that platform) and then compiling the application. For this example, from the catalogue application project file, the invention will create C-code open TV source files and MHEG source files. Pictures 10 will be converted in RES format for open TV and in PNG format for MHEG. It is also possible to define how the project resources and objects will have to be served or streamed in a carousel, with relative timing constraints (e.g. a certain picture must be available to the target application before a certain time or a certain action). This information can be translated into the specific formats required by the target platform.

15 In the example, modules for open TV and scene objects for MHEG will need to be carefully placed in a carousel. If the content provider then wanted to make the content available on a third network, the same project file could be reused, simply by providing a new compilation for the new abstract layer, for instance, MediaHighway.

The project file will contain information concerning the desired latency for 20 screens and single objects, together with the available bandwidth. The software will then try to build a carousel respecting those expectations; the smaller the required bandwidth, the more often an object needs to be repeated in the carousel. It may be that the assigned bandwidth is not large enough to satisfy the requirements, in which case the software should warn the user.

Claims

-12 CLAIMS

1. A system for developing an interactive application including: a controller responsive to a user input and for driving a display, the controller 5 being configured with an interactive authoring tool so as to (i) request delivery parameters from the user, (ii) provide the user with a plurality of selectable common interactive elements, (iii) enable selective importation of specific resources; and (iv) generate a generic application definition; an interactive content project file in which to store the generic application 10 definition; and an interpreter for converting the generic application definition into at least one application for a platform selected from a plurality of interactive platforms.

2. A system as claimed in claim 1 wherein the delivery parameters include service parameters, carousel statistics and database links.

15

3. A system as claimed in claim 1 or 2 wherein the common interactive elements include buttons, list boxes, video controls and presentation/background

templates.

4. A system as claimed in claim 1, 2 or 3 wherein the specific resources include at least one of text, images and graphics.

20

5. A system as claimed in any preceding claim wherein the controller determines whether the application is realisable with the selected resource given the platform and delivery parameters and alerts the user to any problems.

6. A system as claimed in any preceding claim wherein the controller builds the generic application using the selected common interactive element, determines if the 25 layouts and behaviours conform to the platform capabilities and alerts the user to any problems.

7. A system as claimed in any preceding claim wherein the interpreter

-13 determines the API to which the application is to be exported, determines whether or not the plug-ins are available for the API's and alerts the user to input any plug-ins which are not available.

8. A system as claimed in any preceding claim wherein the interpreter 5 includes look-up tables containing parameters and functions so as to convert from the generic application into the required specific application.

9. A system as claimed in any preceding claim wherein the interpreter notifies the user of any problems in conversion.

10. A system as claimed in any preceding claim wherein the interpreter 10 selectively displays a preview of the generic application when converted to any selected specific application.

11. A system as claimed in any preceding claim, for use in developing an interactive application for output in combination with an audio / video sequence as a digital television broadcast.

15

12 A method of developing an interactive application including: requesting delivery parameters from a user; providing the user with a plurality of selectable common interactive elements; enabling selective importation of specific resources; generating a generic application definition; 20 storing the generic application definition in an interactive content project file and converting the generic application definition into at least one application for a platform selected from a plurality of interactive platforms.

13. A method as claimed in claim 12, used in developing an interactive application for output in combination with an audio / video sequence as a digital 25 television broadcast.

14. A computer readable storage medium having recorded thereon code components that, when loaded on data processing means and executed, will cause that

-14 data processing means to operate according to any one of the preceding claims.

15. A system for developing an interactive application, substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to the accompany drawings.

16. A method of developing interactive applications substantially as 5 hereinbefore described with reference to the accompanying drawings.