Reusing single-user applications to create collaborative multi-member applications

    Authors

    B. M. Xu; Q. Gao;C. Y. Li

    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Adv. Eng. Softw.

    Keywords

    Application sharing; Computer-supported cooperative work; Event; processing; CoAutoCAD; Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications; Computer Science, ; Software Engineering

    Abstract

    In contrast to single-user applications, most collaborative multi-member applications have been developed as vehicles for investigating various research issues, and even existing commercial collaborative multi-member applications have not widely accepted by end-users. The paper will describe an innovative approach and relative techniques that can be used to convert existing single-user applications into collaborative applications, without modifying the source code and knowledge of the API of the original single-user applications. The main idea is that user events occurring through the interactions with the application can be caught, distributed, and reconstructed. This approach and supporting techniques were tested in the process of transparently converting a single-user AutoCAD application into a real-time collaborative AutoCAD application called CoAutoCAD, which not only retains the original function and user interface of the single-user AutoCAD application, but supports group collaboration capabilities as well. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Advances in Engineering Software

    Volume

    40

    Issue/Number

    8

    Publication Date

    1-1-2009

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    618

    Last Page

    622

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000266339000009

    ISSN

    0965-9978

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