ConMan

Abstract

Traditionally, interactive applications have been difficult to build, modify and extend. These integrated applications provide bounded bounded functionality, have a single thread of control and a fixed user interface that must anticipate everything the user will need.Current workstations allow several processes to share the screen. With proper communication between processes, it is possible to escape previous models for application development and evolution. ConMan is a high-level visual language we use on an IRIS workstation that lets users dynamically build and modify graphics applications. To do this, a system designer disintegrates complex applications into modular components. By interactively connecting simple components, the user constructs a complete graphics application that matches the needs of a task. A connection manager controls the flow of data between individual components. As a result, we replace the usual user-machine dialog with a dynamic live performance that is orchestrated by the user.