ToolTalk Document and Media Exchange Message Set Development History

While a few vendors have established inter-operability alliances, the range of possible end-user solutions as been restricted. The ToolTalk Document and Media Exchange Message Set allows any application to share a set of multimedia functions with any other application in a transparent manner.

This document contains specifications that have been developed by an alliance of designers from key independent multimedia hardware and software vendors, and Sun Microsystems®. Applications that use these simple protocols can quickly and easily create a ToolTalk interface to an array of multimedia services without concern for a particular service provider. Entire groups of applications can now plug-and-play together, integrating sound, video, graphics, telephony, and other media sources into new and exciting applications. The term plug-and-play means that any tool can be replaced by any other tool that follows the same protocol. That is, any tool that follows a given ToolTalk protocol can be placed (plugged) into your computing environment and perform (play) those functions indicated by the protocol. Tools can be mixed and matched, without modification and without having any specific built-in knowledge of each other. For example, you could create a word processing application that integrates a piece of video into a composition and have the video played by another application.

The ToolTalk Document and Media Exchange Message Set is an efficient set of generic message definitions that provide media control and data exchange. The protocol consists of editor messages for media players, editors, and users.