scope:

Multimedia and Hypermedia Experts Group (MHEG) Part 1 (ISO/IEC DIS 13522-1 [1]) is a generic standard, which specifies the coded representation of interchanged multimedia/hypermedia information objects (MHEG objects). These so-called MHEG objects are handled, interpreted and presented by MHEG engines.

This European Telecommunication Standard (ETS) specifies the abstract Application Programming Interface (API) for the manipulation of multimedia and hypermedia information objects, i.e. the API that shall be provided by MHEG engines for their control by MHEG applications.

This API meets the following requirements:

- it is independent of the programming language used for the MHEG application;

- it is independent of the underlying operating system;

- it is independent of the mechanism used for interchanging information between the API user (i.e. MHEG application) and the API provider (i.e. MHEG engine, the messages that are exchanged as the result of triggering API primitives);

- it is independent of the actual encoding of these messages;

- it is generic and meant to cover all application requirements;

- it is conformance testable;

- it aims to be as easy as possible to implement.