Barry Arons, Carl Binding, Keith Lantz, Chris Schmandt

Abstract

In the recent past,user interfaces have vastly improved due to the widespread availability of high-resolution graphics displays. It is now a new challenge to incorporate other media into the user interface. We strongly believe that voice and audio will be a key component of next-generation interfaces. Towards this end, we are developing an audio server that supports the integration of voice and audio features into the user interface. Application areas in which we are particularly interested include telephone management, voice annotation, real-time teleconferencing, conversational answering machines, and, more generally, computer-based tools to support collaborative work. The intent of the VOX Audio Server is to accomplish for audio what current state-of-the-art window servers (such as in the X Window System) have done for graphics. VOX provides integrated access to and control of audio, voice, and telephony capabilities. It provides for the dynamic configuration of audio devices and their sharing between multiple client applications. We also believe that the server architecture can be extended to support other media, particularly video.