An approach for the integration of general purpose gragraphics systems and window management

Integrating window management capabilities into general purpose graphics systems like GKS or PHIGS is still an open issue. The main integration strategies depending on the responsiblity for resource management, are discussed. The GKS * approach takes the graphics system as client of a window system distributing the resources. Its main idea is to introduce user-initiated dynamic resource distribution into the graphics system's model, which is a fundamental deviation from the philosophy of existing graphics standards. Furthermore the input model of GKS * has to be extended for running a graphics system in an environment with shared input devices between different application processes.