System for dynamic sharing of local and remote displays by maintaining a

Abstract

A method and apparatus for sharing a local display signal from a local computer display to at least one remote computer display includes generating a connection with the display server associated with the remote computer display in response to a signal from the local workstation input device generating a remote display signal in relation to the local display signal in response to a second signal from the input device. The generation of the remote display signal involves dynamically creating a list of display resources for the remote computer display and generating the remote display signal in relation to the display resources and transmitting the remote display signal to the remote display server. Where the local display signal is shared among multiple remote computer displays, the generation of remote display signals creates a list of display resources for each of the remote computer displays, which list is updated for each rendering of the local display signal. In such a situation, the remote display signal for each remote computer display is generated in relation to the associated display resources. In one embodiment, the local display signal is a window based display signal, preferably X-windows. The generation of such a window based signal defines a window instance. Graphics contexts are dynamically allocated for each window instance and are stored remotely while identification information is stored locally.