Standards Activities

Abstract

The ANSI X3H3 (Graphics) arena is concerned with standardization of data exchange, virtual terminals, and the user interface. Over the last six months a number of meetings have taken place between people interested in the Window Management area, beginning with a request for a standard expressed at SIGGRAPH 84. During December of the same year an ad hoc meeting of 12–15 people was held, where it was clear that there was enough interest to proceed. In January 1985, at a meeting of the X3H3 Committee which had some European involvement, interest initially centred on the Computer Graphics Interface (CGI) proposal [30]. The group felt that some modifications to this proposal were called for, such as the introduction of complex clipping areas and the ability to direct primitives to a specific window. A further ad hoc meeting was held in February, where it was decided to explore standards based on the shared resource model, and standards at the applications interface level. A useful line to explore is whether there are limited ways to construct systems; if so it may be possible to build configurable interfaces.