November 8, 1997
[NOTE: If the visual appearance seems impaired, see Browser Notes.]
Welcome to this new release of the Flavor translator. It adds several new features and enhancements to the previous version (Version 2.0, Interim). Among the most important ones are support for all flavor of Unix, Windows NT and 95, and automatic generation of tracing code. If you are familiar with Version 2.0, you may want to consult the What's New section.
Flavor, which stands for "Formal Language for Audio-Visual Object Representation," is a media representation language. It is a language that allows the complete description of how multimedia information is laid out on a bitstream. Flavor has been designed as an extension of the typing system of C++ and Java so that it incorporates bitstream representation semantics.
The translator (flavorc) reads Flavor source files and generates C++ (and
son Java) code that implements the specified bitstream syntax. The code is placed in a .h
(or .java) file, and includes two methods: get() and put().
The former reads an object's information from a bitstream and places it into class
variables, while the latter writes this information to the bitstream. As a result, the
programmer does not have to write any code for reading or writing multimedia
data. In addition, the translator can automatically insert tracing code so that one can
get a detailed dump of the information contained in a bitstream. This is invaluable during
code development.
Flavor is currently used in the MPEG-4 standardization activity for the description of
the bitstream syntax. You can find more information about MPEG-4 at the MPEG web site in http://drogo.cselt.it/mpeg,or
at the MPEG-4 Systems (a subgroup of MPEG-4) web site at http://garuda.imag.fr/MPEG4.
This package contains the core Flavor translator software, its run-time library, numerous examples, as well as extensive documentation.
For more information on the background of Flavor and a lot more, you can also visit the
Flavor web site at http://www.ee.columbia.edu/flavor.
The following is the material contained in this release. If you are not familiar with Flavor, we recommend that you start by reading the Overview Documents and the Flavor Specification, and then the translator's User's Manual.
flavorc.This version does not support maps and ID ranges for polymorphic parsable classes. All other features described in the Flavor Specification are fully supported.
The code included in this release is subject to two different copyright policies. In
summary, code generated using this software is free of any restrictions as long as proper
credit is attributed. The package itself can be freely redistributed, but not as a
product, and without any modifications. The source code to flavorc, if
included, should not be redistributed without our written permission.
You can review the detailed copyright statements in the Copyright and Flavorc Source Code Copyright documents.
We would appreciate any feedback in terms of comments, questions, or bug reports.
Please address all inquiries to Prof.
Alexandros Eleftheriadis at [email protected].
This documentation has been designed for Microsoft
Internet Explorer 4.x.
While Netscape Navigator and other browsers are supported, the visual appearance may be
degraded.
Copyright © 1997 Alexandros Eleftheriadis
All Rights Reserved