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A Concurrent Window System

01 January 1989

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Graphics systems, and window systems in particular, are complex to program. Their event-driven input mechanisms lead to intricate structures based on state machines, event masks, and generally idiosyncratic designs. It is hard to build convenient user interfaces with such cumbersome programming models. The environment of a graphics program can instead be entirely in synchronous terms, using synchronous communication and the concurrent composition of synchronous processes.