ABSTRACT
The emergence of object-oriented design methods and tools provides a means for the integration of the technologies into systems which can support a range of communication related tasks over a range of devices and media. Objects can represent information in several media including text, graphics, image, forms, video and speech. Objects are persistent; there is no concept of a separate non-volatile store into which objects must be put to ensure that they are kept. Views are visual representations of one or more objects and are groups into screen sized workspaces called perspectives. Each perspective may be displayed on one or more workstation simultaneously. Every workstation always shows two perspectives, one in front of the other. The front perspective contains private information on a transparent background and appears on only one workstation. The rear perspective is shareable and may appear on many workstations. Every workstation has an owner who has a standard configuration of perspectives.
