User Interface Working Group Final Report

This volume is a record of the Workshop on Window Management held at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory's Cosener's House between 29 April and 1 May 1985. The main impetus for the Workshop came from the Alvey Programme's Man- Machine Interface Director who was concerned at the lack of a formal definition of window management and the lack of focus for research activities in this area. Window Management per se is not the complete problem in understanding interaction. However, the appearance of bitmap displays from a variety of vendors enabling an operator to work simultaneously with a number of applications on a single display has focused attention on what the overall architecture for such a system should be and also on what the interfaces to both the application and operator should be. The format of the Workshop was to spend the first day with presentations from a number of invited speakers. The aim was to get the participants aware of the current state of the art and to highlight the main outstanding issues. The second day consisted of the Workshop participants splitting into three groups and discussing specific issues in depth. Plenary sessions helped to keep the individual groups working on similar lines. The third day concentrated on the individual groups presenting their results and interacting with the other groups to identify main areas of consensus and also a framework for future work.