TVM The Virtual Meeting

Visual Communications Software for Macintosh and Windows Computers


Extending TVM for Macintosh

The functionality of The Virtual Meeting can be extended by the addition of Helper Applications that can be created by users or programmers. These might include applications for voting, brainstorming or a helper application for displaying a new file or document type.

The Virtual Meeting and your web browser will be able to load and display any type of web document or file format that you have a helper application for. Most helper applications exist for the purpose of statically displaying or processing some particular type of web document. The TVM helper applications do more than merely display documents they can provide interactive browsing, navigating, sketching pointing and gesturing. Other applications that need this type of interactivity in a multi user environment can use the TVM system's infrastructure to let them communicate with other instances of that same application running on different computers in the tele conference. End users can easily create multi user shared applications using the tools described below.

Several user programming development Environments that can send and receive AppleEvents or AppleScript are available. The applications built with these development environments will be remote controllable via AppleEvents or AppleScript. Existing sample applications created in one of these development environments can be easily modified to broadcast messages to all the other copies of that same application that are running on any Macintosh in the system. These messages can be used for HyperText navigation or they can be used to control presentations on the Macintosh or ancillary equipment like video disk players, video cassette recorders, audio tape recorders, MIDI synthesizers etc. AppleScript is an excellent way to customize the conferencing system for your organization.

Several Macintosh programming tools exist that enable programmers to create multi user shared applications. Existing sample applications created in one of these development environments can be easily modified to broadcast messages to all the other copies of that same application that are running on any Macintosh in the system. These messages can be used for HyperText navigation or they can be used to control presentations on the Macintosh or ancillary equipment like video disk players, video cassette recorders, audio tape recorders, MIDI synthesizers etc.

Example applications have been included so you have a starting point for that new conferencing application you would like to develop.


Copyright 1996 by Seth Snyder All Rights Reserved