Sponsors: NSF Interactive Systems Program (IRI-9508514)
Researchers : Prasun Dewan, Kevin Jeffay, John Menges, Goopeel Chung Description : We are developing a new abstraction, called a flexible shared window, that allows users to efficienty see different views of a shared window. Specifically, we are investigating multiple, linked versions of a shared window, dynamic migration and replication of window clients, a hierarchical, file-system-like naming scheme for distributed windows, a distributed window architecture that inverts the traditional architecture, and a modular implementation scheme based on the notion of connecting protocol filters. If successful, this research will lead to a new class of systems, called flexible shared window systems, that can be used to more flexibly and efficiently share existing collaboration-unaware applications/toolkits and more easily implement new collaboration-aware applications/ toolkits. We propose to implement on top of both the X window system and the Java window layer.