In this paper, we discuss the advantages of integrating groupware support for Single Display Groupware (SDG) into the windowing system. For the domain of SDG, a Groupware Windowing System (GWWS) has several advantages over traditional SDG toolkits and applications. A GWWS provides SDG support for legacy applications, custom built SDG applications and supports the execution of multiple applications simultaneously. A GWWS combines the traditional single-user single-input axiom and novel multi-user multi-input desktop environments. We present the Multi-Pointer X Server (MPX), the first GWWS that supports SDG natively, together with our Multi-Pointer Window Manager (MPWM). MPX and MPWM support an arbitrary number of true systems cursors, sophisticated floor control and per-window annotation overlay. To ease the interaction with such a GWWS, we implemented the DeviceShuffler, a system to couple input devices from any computer. The physical connection point of a device is transparent to both the windowing system and the application. This supports true ad-hoc collaboration on shared screens. |
| Cite as: Hutterer, P. and Thomas, B.H. (2007). Groupware Support in the Windowing System. In Proc. Eighth Australasian User Interface Conference (AUIC2007), Ballarat, Australia. CRPIT, 64. Piekarski, W. and Plimmer, B., Eds. ACS. 39-46. |
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