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\f(HB GENERAL PLAN FOR KHOROS 2.0 \fP
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March 10, 1992
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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.
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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.
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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 system (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 programming.
The applications that are built will be able to operate on very large data
sets in a distributed computing environment. 
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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 advantage of the new
infrastructure.  The infrastructure development will provide a set of
high-level libraries for writing applications:
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data transport and distributed computing via the phantom library
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an abstract data services library for writing data processing programs
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an improved and expanded X Windows display library built on a display widget set
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an improved and expanded X Windows graphics (1D, 2D, 3D, surface, volume) library and graphics widget set
.IP \(bu
a set of user interface libraries that allow dynamic (re)configuration of the UI
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Khoros 2.0 will include an improved approach to toolboxes that simplifies
the user's view of creating and maintaining a toolbox.  The Khoros end-user 
will see increased functionality in all areas of the system.
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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.
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Peer Review of Specifications
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The Khoros group is now creating detailed specifications and sample
implementations for Khoros 2.0 that will be made available
to Consortium members for review and comment. The
Consortium Advisory Group will make the final recommendations on
the specifications.
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The Khoros user community's participation in Khoros 1.0 was critical
to its success.  We will continue to accept comments, bug-reports and
requests via e-mail and the news group.
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Closing Note
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The Khoros group has put a great deal of effort in providing quality support
via e-mail.  The responsiveness of this support will necessarily drop off
as the emphasis moves to the development of Khoros 2.0.