BUILDING REAL TIME GROUPWARE WITH GROUPKIT, A GROUPWARE TOOLKIT

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of GroupKit, a groupware toolkit that lets developers build real-time desktop conferencing applications. GroupKit was constructed from our belief that programming groupware should be only slightly harder than building functionally similar single-user systems. We have been able to significantly reduce the implementation complexity of groupware through the key features that comprise GroupKit. A \fIruntime infrastructure\fR automatically manages the creation, interconnection, and communications of the distributed processes that comprise conference sessions. A set of \fIgroupware programming abstractions\fR allows developers to control the behaviour of distributed processes, to take action on state changes, and to share relevant data. \fIGroupware widgets\fR lets interface features of value to conference participants to be easily added to groupware applications. \fISession managers\fR-interfaces that let people create and manage their meetings-are decoupled from groupware applications and are built by developers to accommodate the group's working style. Example GroupKit applications in a variety of domains have been implemented with only modest effort.