| Most of today's Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) and toolkits are based on serial, discrete, token based, paradigms that seem to acceptably implement traditional WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer) interfaces. These tools however, are not suited for “next generation” interaction techniques such as Virtual Reality (VR). These interaction techniques rely upon asynchronous, parallel, and continuous user/computer interaction. This work proposes a specification that directly addresses these issues. In addition, DLoVe also provides a mechanism for executing programs designed for a single machine to be executed in a distributed environment, where updates on DLoVe variables are processed in parallel. DLoVe's or transforming existing single-user programs into multi-user ones. Moreover, DLoVe addresses issues of performance and maintainability, providing mechanisms, drivers, and utilities that allow run time tuning and network management to be specified in a simple manner.; This thesis describes in detail the proposed system, evaluates it, and provides examples and analysis of several applications developed within DLoVe's paradigm, and provides a guide on how applications can be implemented in this framework. |
