GENERAL PLAN FOR KHOROS 2.0

                                 March 10, 1992

     The purpose of this plan is to provide a summary of the Khoros
     Consortium's intentions and direction to the Khoros user community.
     This plan supersedes the Khoros 2.0 plan that was previously made
     available, dated October, 91.

     1.  Project Direction
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          Khoros is an Open Environment for Information Processing, Data
     Visualization, and Software Development.   Khoros is used both as an
     off-the-shelf, end-user system and as an application development
     environment.  Consortium members are most interested in using the
     various libraries and the user interface development system to build
     and maintain new applications.

          The next two major releases of the Khoros system (2.0 and 3.0)
     will emphasize the development of an "Application Builder" that
     integrates the visual language and the user interface development sys-
     tem (UIDS).   A complete stand-alone, interactive application will be
     created by using a direct manipulation UI builder combined with visual
     programming.  There are two major efforts that must be completed to
     make this a reality; 1) a Khoros infrastructure that is complete and
     well designed and 2) integration of UI development with visual pro-
     gramming.  The applications that are built will be able to operate on
     very large data sets in a distributed computing environment.

     2.  Technical Plans for Khoros 2.0
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          Khoros 2.0 will include major changes to the infrastructure of
     the system, and re-working of interactive applications to take advan-
     tage of the new infrastructure.  The infrastructure development will
     provide a set of high-level libraries for writing applications:

     o    data transport and distributed computing via the phantom library

     o    an abstract data services library for writing data processing
          programs

     o    an improved and expanded X Windows display library built on a
          display widget set

     o    an improved and expanded X Windows graphics (1D, 2D, 3D, surface,
          volume) library and graphics widget set

     o    a set of user interface libraries that allow dynamic
          (re)configuration of the UI

     Khoros 2.0 will include an improved approach to toolboxes that simpli-
     fies the user's view of creating and maintaining a toolbox.  The
     Khoros end-user will see increased functionality in all areas of the
     system.


     3.  Release Plans
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          Khoros 2.0 Alpha will be made available to Consortium Members in
     September, with Beta following in about two months.  Khoros 2.0 will
     be made available as an Open Distribution in early 1993.

     4.  Peer Review of Specifications
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          The Khoros group is now creating detailed specifications and sam-
     ple implementations for Khoros 2.0 that will be made available to Con-
     sortium members for review and comment. The Consortium Advisory Group
     will make the final recommendations on the specifications.

          The Khoros user community's participation in Khoros 1.0 was crit-
     ical to its success.  We will continue to accept comments, bug-reports
     and requests via e-mail and the news group.

                                  Closing Note

     The Khoros group has put a great deal of effort in providing quality
     support via e-mail.  The responsiveness of this support will neces-
     sarily drop off as the emphasis moves to the development of Khoros
     2.0.