Abstract: An object-oriented view system controls the display of screen graphics for a plurality of application programs, each of which generates graphical information for display in a window assigned to it. The view system has a system window manager which is common to all of the application programs and which defines application window areas on the display screen and corresponding application window storage areas in the display screen buffer. Each application program instantiates a view system object from class information in the computer operating system. Each view system object includes a view object with program code that directly stores screen display information generated by the application into the screen buffer. This arrangement allows the application programs to avoid the conventional "bottleneck" that develops when all of the screen display information must be stored in the screen buffer by the common system window manager.

Abstract: A view system is provided for each application program in a computer system in order to display application-generated information on a display. To increase graphic speed, the view system transfers graphic information directly into the screen buffer into a screen buffer area defined by a visible area definition. The view system provides support for minimal recomputation required for a correct display of data in several views when one view is changed. First, the view system generates an update request each time a change is made to one view, but the update request is only forwarded to those views which are affected by the change. Second, update requests are collected over a period of time and used to determine an invalid area caused by all of the requests and this latter invalid area is used to update each affected view.

Abstract: A view system is disclosed which provides support polymorphic initialization and finalization of objects. This mechanism is used by the view system to support virtual method invocation at construction/destruction time for objects that require the needed behavior. The C++ language does not support the invocation of virtual methods from within the constructor/destructor of a given object. The view system provides a mechanism whereby an initialization method is invoked after the object construction is completed, but before any methods are invoked on the constructed object. A similar mechanism is used to invoke a virtual finalization method before the object destruction is started. This mechanism is not view system-specific, but is provided and used by the view system to support such behavior.

Abstract: A view system is disclosed which provides support a mechanism to provide a multitask-safe wrapper or objects which are not multitask safe. This mechanism makes it possible to use objects that are not task-safe in a multitasking environment without modifying or understanding the internal workings of the said objects. This mechanism is not view system-specific, but is provided and used by the view system to support such behavior.