Cooperative control for sharing applications based on distributed multiparty desktop conferencing system: MERMAID

A distributed multiparty desktop conferencing system, called MERMAID, was developed for supporting a wide range of group cooperative work. The authors discuss basic conditions for shared applications and present a sharing control scheme using MERMAID-served functions. The scheme is based on a replicated architecture, in which a copy of the application runs at every site or workstation. MERMAID provides communication functions for maintaining an identical state across all copies of an application in a replicated architecture. Two examples are included. One is an example of sharing an inherently single-user application, and the other is of sharing an application with access to external resources