Currently, among Unix platforms, the SGI Indy is one of the better hardware/software systems for doing multimedia computing; this is especially true given SGI's good support for video - all Indys are equipped with video capture and video camera hardware. In addition, SGI seems to be leading the pack in terms of a functional desktop interface running on X/Motif. Eventually we'll see a proliferation of standard CDE/COSE desktops that will do the same thing as IndigoMagic, but over multiple platforms and vendors. At that point it will make sense to port the current SGI-specific desktop support to a more standards-oriented platform.
As a test of the portability of WWWeasel, and also due to the popularity of Sun Microsystems SunOS machines, we have delivered a successful port of WWWeasel to SunOS 4.1.3, minus the support for video and desktop drag-and-drop. The system remains nonetheless useful for a variety of WWW-based publishing or collaboration needs, since file browsing, media conversion, screen snapshots, audio playback/recording, and retrieval of media from remote locations all function just like they do on the SGI.
Because we attempt to use the platform-default media recording tools, we are able to port WWWeasel to other platforms quite easily. Porting WWWeasel often consists simply of recompiling the WINTERP platform on which WWWeasel is built, then hooking in the appropriate platform-specific programs which are specified in a table of external programs. Since media interfaces are probably one of the least standard, and least portable interfaces, we choose to interface to the system's media interfaces at the level of whole program units. The implementation of this makes extensive use of WINTERP's asynchronous subprocess facility which provides fine grained control over multiple interactive subprocesses.