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Raphael Wimmer, Fabian Hennecke
Everything is a Window: Utilizing the Window Manager for Multi-Touch Interaction
In the workshop 'Engineering Patterns for Multi-Touch Interfaces' in conjunction with the 2nd ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems (EICS), June 2010, Berlin, Germany. (bib)

Interactive surfaces are becoming more and more common in research and everyday use. Recent research has focused on hardware technologies and basic interaction techniques. While the WIMP paradigm is the prevalent standard for desktop computers, there is no consensus yet on similar paradigms for interactive surfaces. In order to explore novel interaction paradigms for interactive surfaces, researchers commonly use specialized frameworks like the Microsoft Surface SDK or write their own middleware, forfeiting many advantages of existing operating systems and closing out legacy applications. This paper proposes an approach for building multitouchenabled desktop environments based on common UNIX paradigms and components. By extending the systems window manager researchers can transparently control user input and graphical output on interactive surfaces, simultaneously supporting both multitouch-capable and legacy applications.