Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Andrey E Arsov

Leonardo Esteban Blanco

Paul C David

Ashraf A Michail

Gerhard A Schneider

Gregory David Swedberg

Oreste Dorin Ungureanu

Matthew W Calkins

Greg D Schechter

Adrian Secchia

Jevan D Saks

Ian Hanschen

Don Curtis

Christopher A Fortier

Described is a pluggable policy component that determines the look and feel, or windows visual experience, of a computer user interface. Window-related instructions are redirected to the policy component, while client area change instructions are provided to a substrate (into which the policy component plugs in) that includes a composition component. The plug-in policy component handles windows-related (e.g., structural or attribute) changes to a scene graph to construct and maintain the scene graph, while the substrate handles program content changes to the client areas within windows. The substrate may include a desktop window manager that has access to the client areas in the scene graph, whereby the desktop window manager can copy a client area for rendering. For example, the desktop window manager can provide a supplemental live thumbnail image of a window.

Pluggable window manager architecture using a scene graph system

A visual tree structure as specified by a program is constructed and maintained by a visual system's user interface thread. As needed, the tree structure is traversed on the UI thread, with changes compiled into change queues. A secondary rendering thread that handles animation and graphical composition takes the content from the change queues, to construct and maintain a condensed visual tree. Static visual subtrees are collapsed, leaving a condensed tree with only animated attributes such as transforms as parent nodes, such that animation data is managed on the secondary thread, with references into the visual tree. When run, the rendering thread processes the change queues, applies changes to the condensed trees, and updates the structure of the animation list as necessary by resampling animated values at their new times. Content in the condensed visual tree is then rendered and composed. Animation and a composition communication protocol are also provided.

System and method for managing visual structure, timing, and animation in a graphics processing system

The present invention is directed to a system and method for a unified composition engine that, in general, combines previously separate composition services. The unified composition engine provides a composition service used both in-process in conjunction with application programming interfaces (API's) and on the desktop as the desktop compositor.

System and method for a unified composition engine in a graphics processing system

Growing community of inventors

Sammamish, WA, United States of America

Andrey E Arsov