While multimedia applications are rapidly becoming an integral part of stand-alone, single-user systems, the problems encountered when moving into distributed environments are only beginning to be identified. This book represents the results from the Eurographic symposium on "Multimedia/Hypermedia in Open Distributed Environments", held on 6-8 June 1994, Graz, Austria. About 20 contributions cover a broad range of problems related to this topic. Organized in six sessions, the book gives a comprehensive overview about the state-of-the-art in research, development and standardization in the areas of hyper-media (hm) encoding and presentation, distributed multimedia (mm) tele- and information services, mm/hm development and authoring tools, co-operative environments and new architectural concepts. In addition, the future mm/hm encoding and presentation standards MHEG and PREMO are presented. As a result, the reader should profit from this book in getting up-to-date information about the current trends in (the development of) mm/hm services and applications in open, distributed environments.