Twin: An Even Smaller Window System For Even Smaller Devices

Keith Packard
Cambridge Research Laboratory, HP Labs, HP
keithp@keithp.com

Abstract:

With embedded systems gaining high resolution displays and powerful cpus, the desire for sophisticated graphical user interfaces can be realized in even the smallest of systems. While the cpupower available for a given power budget has increased dramatically, these tiny systems remain severely memory constrained. This unique environment presents interesting challenges in graphical system design and implementation. To explore this particular space, a new window system, Twin, has been developed. Using ideas from modern window systems in larger environments, Twin offers overlapping translucent windows, anti-aliased graphics and scalable fonts in a total memory budget of 100KB.

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Slides:

Presented at the 2005 Ottawa Linux Symposium in July, 2005.


Keith Packard
Last modified: Thu Jul 21 03:07:57 PDT 2005