System and method for describing presentation and behavior information in an ITV application
View Patent ↗An ITV application definition language (ADL) used to generate ITV applications for different types of target platforms and devices. The ADL provides a plurality of core data structure types upon which one or more data structures may be built. Data structures storing ITV content presentation and behavior information are referred to as resources. A resource is associated with a globally unique identifier that allows the data structure to be efficiently stored and retrieved from a hash table. A resource is also associated with an expiration time stamp that indicates when the resource is to be freed from memory. A resource is of arbitrary length, and contains values that differ from the default values stored at a receiving client device. Resources are also packaged into a module that may be catered to a platform and/or profile of a receiving client. The client may quickly determine whether the module is relevant to it by examining the platform and/or profile ID contained in a header of the module.
1. An interactive television (ITV) system comprising:
an authoring tool generating an ITV application, the ITV application including presentation information for presenting ITV content, the presentation information being represented via a plurality of data structures built based on one or more predetermined data structure types, at least one of the plurality of data structures configured to include an attribute and value pair for defining a presentation parameter of the ITV content; and
an execution engine receiving and executing the ITV application and the ITV content, the execution engine storing a plurality of default values for a plurality of attributes for defining default presentation parameters of the ITV content, the execution engine determining whether the at least one of the data structures includes one or more values for one or more of the plurality of attributes, and responsive to a determination that the at least one of the data structures includes the one or more values, retrieving the one or more values from the at least one of the data structures instead of the corresponding default values for presenting the ITV content.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the ITV application includes behavior information describing how the application behaves in response to an external event, the behavior information being stored in a data structure separate from the data structure storing the presentation information.
3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of data structures are of variable length.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein each data structure is referenced by a unique identifier associated with a memory location for the data structure.
5. The system of claim 4 , wherein a portion of the unique identifier uniquely identifies a creator of the data structure.
6. The system of claim 1 further comprising:
an interchange formatting system parsing the ITV application and generating a compact representation of the ITV application prior to delivery to the execution engine.
7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the compact representation is a binary representation.
8. The system of claim 1 , wherein a first of the plurality of data structures inherits properties associated with a second of the plurality of data structures.
9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the plurality of data structures are packaged into a module having header information.
10. The system of claim 9 , wherein the execution engine examines the header information for determining a relevance of the module to the execution engine.
11. The system of claim 8 , wherein the plurality of data structures are packaged into a module catered to a particular platform of a receiving client.
12. The system of claim 8 , wherein the plurality of data structures are packaged into a module catered to a particular profile of a receiving client.
13. The system of claim 1 , wherein one of the plurality of data structures are built based on a dictionary data structure type that maps symbols to unique identifier values.
14. The system of claim 13 , wherein a symbol is associated with an event, and the unique identifier value mapped to the event identifies an action data structure.
15. The system of claim 1 , wherein the predetermined data structure types are building blocks for describing and organizing all ITV presentation and behavior information for any ITV content without introducing a new data structure type.
16. The system of claim 15 , wherein the predetermined data structure types include a dictionary type for mapping symbols to values, wherein the values reference other data structures or contain scalar values.
17. The system of claim 16 , wherein the predetermined data structure types include a unique identifier vector type for listing series of unique identifiers.
18. The system of claim 17 , wherein at least one of the series of unique identifiers identify a particular action followed by one or more operands upon which the action operates.
19. The system of claim 17 , wherein at least one of the series of unique identifiers identify one or more values that act as arguments for another resource.
20. The system of claim 17 , wherein at least one of the series of unique identifier identify one or more navigable child widgets in their navigation order.