PREMO: A Framework for Multimedia Middleware A Java description of the ISO/IEC Standard Lecture Notes in Computer Science No. 1591

graphics and image processing, completed work on a new standard for multimedia pres-entation, called PREMO (PResentation Environment for Multimedia Objects), and pub-lished under the official reference ISO/IEC 14478. The original proposal for PREMO was for a new computer graphics standard, to be based explicitly on an object-oriented approach. Such an approach was seen as timely, given that object-oriented design and programming had rapidly become established, and work on a number of object-oriented APIs for computer graphics had generated interest within the graphics community for this technology (Inventor, the precursor of OpenInventor, is probably the best known ex-ample). Development of a new standard was also seen as an opportunity to address fur-ther technological issues. First, the new standard should encompass other media, such as video, audio (both captured and synthetic), and in principle be extensible to new mo-dalities such as haptic output and speech or gestural input, which have become increas-ingly integrated within graphics applications; virtual environments and systems for visualization being prime examples. The second requirement was that the standard should allow the construction of distributed systems, where parts of a system involve