ScriptX

ScriptX is a discontinued multimedia-oriented development environment created in 1990 by Kaleida Labs. Unlike packages such as Macromedia Director, ScriptX is not an authoring tool for creating multimedia titles, although it does come with a built-in authoring tool. Rather, it is a general-purpose, object-oriented, multiplatform development environment that includes a dynamic language and a class library. ScriptX is as applicable for implementing client–server applications as it is for authoring multimedia titles. ScriptX was designed from the ground up in an integrated fashion, making it smaller, more consistent, and easier to learn than equivalent traditional systems available at the time (say, a C++ environment and class library).[1]

ScriptX is part of a complete platform for interactive multimedia. The platform has three major components: the Kaleida Media Player, the ScriptX Language Kit, and application development and authoring tools.

The Kaleida Media Player is the heart of the system, allowing developers to target a single application for the Kaleida Media Player instead of targeting specific operating systems like the classic Mac OS and Microsoft Windows.

ScriptX was designed to work across multiple hardware platforms and operating systems. Version 1.0 was released for Microsoft's Windows 3.1 and Apple's System 7.

The Kaleida Media Player is used to play back ScriptX titles. The appropriate KMP for Windows or System 7 must be installed on a user's computer to run a ScriptX title.

In December of 1993, DARPA and NSF awarded a research grant to a consortium (the "East/West Group") composed of American universities, publishing companies, and Apple Computer (so-named because its members were drawn from both the East and West Coasts of the United States), to develop a new multimedia CD-ROM-based authoring environment for computer-based instructional material, based on ScriptX.[2] However, the project soon encountered technical issues with the ScriptX technology, which exceeded the system requirements of many low-end machines which were expected to be used to consume the authored content; at the same time, it was increasingly becoming clear that the future was the Internet not CD-ROMs and Java had emerged as a commercially-available environment for producing cross-platform applications which met the project's requirements, without the technical issues the ScriptX-based solution had encountered. Therefore, in December 1996, the research project was relaunched using Java as a platform and further development using ScriptX was abandoned.[2]