Building Distributed User Interfaces with Fresco

The X Window System provides network-transparent access from an application to a user's display. However, X does not provide any convenient mechanism for distributing components of a user interface across a collection of machines. Fresco is an X Consortium effort (formerly known as XC++) to define a new set of programming interfaces covering and expanding current X functionality. To allow the distribution of user interface components in a network, we are using the OMG Interface Definition Language (IDL) to specify the Fresco protocol for linking and embedding components. This approach provides a simple, uniform framework for integrating application objects in a distributed, heterogeneous environment. Introduction An X Window System user can run an application on a remote machine and direct the application to connect to the user's local display. This functionality allows flexibility in the organization of a site and allows some users to access applications that might not otherwise be ..