Apple Inc.

Adobe, Inc.

Thomas W Costa

Kenneth Christian Dyke

David J Redman

Michael F Culbert

Ian C Hendry

Tim Millet

Simon M Douglas

Assana Fard

Christopher P Wright

Adrian T Sheppard

Eve Brasfield

Amanda R Rainer

Mike Nugent

Ingrid Aligaen

Chris Niederauer

Mark C Hamburg

Geoffrey Grant Stahl

Geoff Stahl

Lance Lewis

Randolph A Strauss

David W Clark

Thomas W McRae

Assana M Fard

An operating system creates one or more virtual display interfaces for communication of display data and user input events between the application layer and one or more virtual display devices. The one or more virtual display devices are not physically connected to the computing system managed by the operating system. One or more applications are executed in an application layer. At least one of the one or more applications communicates display data to and receives user input events from at least one of the one or more display devices using at least one of the display interfaces. At least one other of the one or more applications communicates display data to and receives user input events from at least one of the one or more virtual display devices using at least one of the one or more virtual display interfaces.

System and method for virtual displays

The disclosed embodiments provide a system that facilitates seamlessly switching between graphics-processing units (GPUs) to drive a display. In one embodiment, the system receives a request to switch from using a first GPU to using a second GPU to drive the display. In response to this request, the system uses a kernel thread which operates in the background to configure the second GPU to prepare the second GPU to drive the display. While the kernel thread is configuring the second GPU, the system continues to drive the display with the first GPU and a user thread continues to execute a window manager which performs operations associated with servicing user requests. When configuration of the second GPU is complete, the system switches the signal source for the display from the first GPU to the second GPU.

Facilitating efficient switching between graphics-processing units

Exemplary embodiments of methods, apparatuses, and systems for seamlessly migrating a user visible display stream sent to a display device from one rendered display stream to another rendered display stream are described. For one embodiment, mirror video display streams are received from both a first graphics processing unit (GPU) and a second GPU, and the video display stream sent to a display device is switched from the video display stream from the first GPU to the video display stream from the second GPU, wherein the switching occurs during a blanking interval for the first GPU that overlaps with a blanking interval for the second GPU.

Seamless display migration

The present invention provides a method for a developer to create and display a &ldquo;dialog definition&rdquo;, i.e., a description of the dialog that has the position and size of its constituent elements expressed in relative layout rules. These layout rules include expressions of alignment and/or justification of the elements within a container, rather than expressions of the coordinate positions of the elements. In addition, a set of text strings is provided for each language in a separate language file. The user may identify an operating system and a language in which the dialog will be displayed, and the size of the elements in the identified operating system and language will be determined by the computer. The description is interpreted in the computer to lay out the dialog.

Dialogs for multiple operating systems and multiple languages

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Thomas W Costa