Section: New Results
Document Formats
XTiger Language
The XTiger language was designed initially to specify document templates that could guide an authoring tool, and then an author, in producing well structured XHTML documents. Several experiments conducted with our partners in the Palette project have shown that this basic feature may be extended. The XTiger language is actually an excellent means to help users to enter very structured documents and data through the familiar metaphor of text editing.
New work has started to use XTiger, with minor extensions, for entering well structured XML data through an XHTML document manipulated in a web browser. The goal is to allow average web users to feed XML data bases and XML applications simply by interacting with a very familiar tool, their usual browser. This work is done in cooperation with the Media group at EPFL.
A2ML Audio Format
We have designed a new version of A2ML, our XML format for interactive audio, to follow the trend in powerful mobile audio devices lead by Apple with its iPhone. A2ML, in its 2009 full version, offers, concerning the sequencing of sounds, a level of capabilities similar to that of iXMF, the interactive audio file format defined by the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG). But, as opposed to iXMF, A2ML supports not only sequencing but also 3D sound rendering and parameter animation (DSP and positional parameters). SMIL internal events are supported and external events can be freely defined by the sound designer. Scripting, which is difficult to implementand use, has been replaced by a declarative way of handling dynamic soundtrack adaptation to the context. Consequently, A2ML is now in its full version an audio format suitable not only for mobile applications like auditory guidance, soundwalks or soundscape, but also for 3D games on mobile phones and consoles.
A sound manager/engine for the iPhone platform, which should be easily ported to all games consoles by translating objC code into C++ code, has been written and is under testing. It is worth noting that no sound manager has yet been written for the iXMF format, probably because implementing a sound manager for a binary format with scripting inside, is a very difficult task.
The construction of an A2ML sound model for an interactive jungle, usable in a game or in a sound installation, is explained in [7] and downloadable (in MP3) from http://gforge.inria.fr/projects/iaudio .
