JACIE-an authoring language for rapid prototyping net-centric, multimedia and collaborative applications

With continuous acceptance of the World Wide Web (WWW) as a de facto standard for human-computer interaction and human-human communication, it is desirable to develop net-centric, multimedia and collaborative applications. We present a new scripting language, JACIE, designed to support rapid prototyping and implementation of such applications. The necessity to support the management of multimedia interaction and communication in collaborative applications is highlighted. JACIE facilitates such support through the concepts of channels and a collection of interaction protocols. JACIE also features a template-based programming style, a single program for both client and server, and platform-independence by using Java as the target language. All these features characterise a desirable multimedia software engineering tool.