Workplace Shell
The Workplace Shell (WPS ) forms together and building on the Presentation Manager object-oriented graphical user interface of the operating system IBM OS / 2, version 2.00.
At the time of introduction of the WPS was groundbreaking. The other concept and the variety of functions, however, was perceived by many newcomers around too complicated, what OS / 2 earned the reputation of being difficult to use. Over time, a number of concepts and functions of WPS was acquired gradually in graphical user interfaces of other operating systems, such as KDE and GNOME for Unix -like systems and Microsoft Windows.
Object orientation
The object-oriented concept of WPS shows up in several places of operation:
Sub-components of the system, drives, files, and directories, printers, and references to programs are mapped as an object and can be manipulated via context menus and drag-and - drop operations. In this way, for example, to Copy both files and customize fonts and colors in windows.
Characteristic is further the document-oriented approach to work. Instead of an application to start and from there to create new documents and edit existing, applications are started from the document with this. To create a new document called stencils can be used with no or prefabricated content. Types of documents can be associated with a plurality of applications, so that you can select which application the document is to be opened.
When you call the help function, finally, information about the currently selected object or menu item appear.
Object-orientation is also reflected in the internal structure of the Workplace Shell, which is realized with the help of the System Object Model ( SOM). It consists of a hierarchical tree of WPS classes, each of which implement properties and manipulation possibilities of the individual object types. Particularly important are the concepts of inheritance and replacement. These allow developers without knowledge of the WPS source code to add new components and applications and to expand existing, changed or even replaced completely. Most striking examples of this technique are the open- source projects XWorkplace that extends the actual user interface comprehensive, and Audio / Data - CD - Creator, one to be integrated into the system software for burning CDs and DVDs.
History
The WPS was introduced with OS / 2 2.0 and replaced the existing since version 1.1 desktop manager, the program manager of the very older versions of Windows, similar in appearance and function to 3.11. With the release of new versions of the OS has also been accompanied in each case a revision of the appearance and expansion of the function. With OS / 2 2.1, for example, the Multimedia Presentation Manager ( MMPM / 2) was introduced, which provides system-wide support for various image, audio and video formats. In OS / 2 Warp Version 4 of the MMPM / 2 and the integration of network components have been improved and implemented a language called Voice Control Type.
Since version 1.1 eComStation contains a reduced functionality version of the open source software XWorkplace and version 1.2 much of the multimedia subsystem have been replaced and expanded functionally.