Abstract: A system and method are disclosed whereby the look and feel of the OS/2 operating system is added to the Swing application program interface (API), in an enhanced version of the API, referred to herein as AWTSwing. A further disclosure is the creation of a thread-relative setLookAndFeel method, which only accepts calls from a particular thread to adopt a prescribed look and feel. This makes it possible for an application to have a look and feel distinct from that of the platform, or of other concurrently executing applications. This capability is not present in the conventional version of the Swing API, which treats look and feel settings as global.

Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for providing additional features in an enhanced version of the portable application program interface, Java Swing. The enhanced API can replace the first generation heavyweight abstract windowing toolkit used by legacy Java application programs, with no changes required to those programs. Thus, legacy applications running on various platforms can benefit from the improved functionality. Among the added features are a consistent, platform neutral GUI look and feel, Unicode font encoding for all text controls, and improved text drawing (based on the use of a high performance Java font rasterizer). The enhanced version of Swing is referred to herein as AWTSwing.

Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for dynamically controlling output buffering in the Swing application program interface (API). By default, the Swing API buffers its output when displaying graphical representations of objects in a graphical user interface (GUI). In some cases, this may be inefficient. For example, if a number of screen objects are nested, buffering may defeat the hardware acceleration capability of video graphics hardware within the computer. The system and method disclosed herein provide the application programmer the means to enable and disable buffering, within the functionality contained in an enhanced version of the Swing API. This enhanced version of Swing is referred to herein as AWTSwing.

Abstract: A system and method are disclosed whereby the lightweight components of the Swing application program interface (API) may be used to replace heavyweight components of the abstract windowing toolkit (AWT) in legacy applications. This replacement allows the user interface of the application to preserve a consistent look and feel across diverse platforms, such as Windows, Unix, OS/2, etc. A lightweight peer class is created, which emulates the interaction of objects created by the application with the former heavyweight peers—this avoids any need to modify the legacy software. A proxy class is also created, which intercepts events associated with the object and directs them to a lightweight component of the Swing API (rather than to the AWT). The proxy also establishes a parent-child relationship between the layout inhabited by the object and the Swing component, so that Swing draws over the image of the object created by the AWT.

Abstract: An apparatus and method as shown automatically selects a video stream of a video-conference for transmission or display. The apparatus and method includes a receiving step for receiving video and audio streams over a network from participants in a video-conference. Each of the audio streams each has amplitude data. A suppressing step suppresses some of either the first or second video stream based on the amplitude data of the corresponding audio stream. The video stream or streams that are not suppressed are either displayed on a display screen of a participant of the video conference or transmitted to other terminals for display on display screens.

Abstract: A method automatically limits the transmission of a video stream from a terminal to a network. The method includes a capturing step which captures a video and audio stream from a camera and microphone at a terminal participating in a video-conference. A transmitting step transmits the audio and video streams to the network and a varying step varies the amount of video stream data transmitted in the transmitting step to the network based on an audio level of the audio stream. An apparatus automatically limits the transmission of a video stream from a terminal to a network. The apparatus includes a microphone, a camera, a network interface and a processor. The microphone and camera respectively capture audio and video stream data from a participant in a video conference. The network interface is coupled to a network, for transmitting the audio and video stream data to the network. The processor is coupled to the microphone, the camera and the network interface.

Abstract: A multimedia system includes a multimedia device control program having a plurality of application program selectable controls for controlling operation of a like plurality of different classes of multimedia devices. Each class has a different set of controllable device functions or attributes. In response to selection of a class by an application program, a unique control panel is created in a user interface for controlling operation of a device. The selected control performs all of the processing actions necessary to control the device in response to user selections on the interface, without involvement of the application program in such actions. The multimedia control program includes a plurality of panel templates from which control panels are created in a control screen. Each panel has a plurality of controllers that can manipulated by a user to control a corresponding function of a multimedia device. The templates provide a consistent interfaces having a common look and feel.