Theseus on X. A graphical user interface system

This paper describes THESEUS, a system to provide graphical user interfaces for software tools, and highlight the implications of porting THESEUS to a multi-programming environment. An introduction into the THESEUS concepts is given. An overview of the structure of the THESEUS implementation on X11 demonstrates the usefulness of combining the X11 Toolkit "widget" abstraction for user interface entities with the high level concepts of THESEUS. It is shown how THESEUS in combination with some X11 concepts such as resource management and defaulting mechanisms can be used to easily create graphics user interfaces and adapt them to the user's and the application's preferences. Some important issues raised by porting THESEUS from a single user/single-tasking environment to the multi-user/multi-tasking world of UNIX and X are highlighted.