GroupKit

Introduction : Groupkit is a groupware development toolkit extension for Tcl/Tk(Tool command language) to make groupware application and prototypes Quickly and easily.It is helpful for researchers to rapidly develop groupware prototypes and to perform experiments on those.

Working : There are different processes those works in groupkit. The central process is the registrar which keeps track of the happenings. Each user has session manager which connects to the registrar. The session managers are responsible here to create conferences as a separate process. The task of groupkit is to open network connection between processes.

Development facts:

• Session manager is autonomous component and need not to be included in the development process.

• Groupkit environment data structure is open to the developer to get information about conference.

• Synchronization of groupkit conferences is possible through multicast remote procedure calls.

• Widgets has been provided by the groupkit to attach with the application with the tools useful for the end users.

• Event handling mechanisms are available with groupkit.

Reference:

[Rossman and Greenberg,1996]- ”Building real-time groupware with GroupKit, a groupware toolkit”.