DataTypes provides a system-standard for object-oriented, real-time, streaming of various types of multimedia data, including synchronized audio and video.

The concept, and realization, of DataTypes is to be able to, in an object-oriented manner, display or play any type of multimedia data. This includes documents, hypertext documents, sounds, pictures, animation and video data. Figure 1 shows a simplified view of a portion of the DataTypes class hierarchy.

By dropping any type of data file on a display utility or other DataTypes-aware application, the appropriate class is dynamically bound and the data displayed.

DataTypes features include:

• Object-oriented using the language-independent features of the Amiga's Class Manager.

• Common functionality is placed in the root-level class.

• Provides the ability to embed different object types within an application. For example, an application can embed a picture object or even an AmigaGuide hypertext document browser within their application's window.

• Objects can be embedded within other objects. For example, a picture object can be embedded within an AmigaGuide hypertext object.

• Dynamic binding.

• DataTypes objects can be multi-threaded. For example, the video class uses one thread to display the video and another thread to stream the video data.

• Objects can be queried to determine what functionality they support.

• Clipboard support.

• Applications can use DataTypes as a file loader. For example, a Paint program can use DataTypes to transparently load any type of picture data file.

• Format conversions between objects of the same base type. For example, a GIF picture can be saved as an ILBM picture.

• Can be used to determine the data type of any file or clipboard data.

DataTypes is currently available for the Amiga and requires a minimum of AmigaDOS 3.0.

Trademarks
Amiga, AmigaDOS, AmigaGuide and DataTypes are trademarks of Commodore-Amiga, Inc.