A telewriting system on a LAN using a pen-based computer as the terminal

The system we developed is software for implementing a “telewriting” terminal. Here, we propose a method for implementing this telewriting terminal as an application program running on pen-based computers. “Telewriting” is a technology in which the ink data (written with a pen on one terminal) is transmitted in real time to other terminals and displayed on their monitors. When this process is carried out between two terminals in both directions, two usem using telewnting terminals can mutually and simultaneously transmit and view visual information. If two usem can use a combination of this telewriting and telephone, they can send to and receive fl-om each other audio-visual information in real time. Consequently, two users can communicate smoothly without having to interrupt their flow of conversation. Already, there are some systems which can be used to conduct telewriting and othem called shared drawing tools. Examples are Displayphone (Bell Telephone Laboratory, U.S.A.), Scribophone (Philip& Holland), Sketchphone (NIT, Japan), MERMAID (NEC, Japan), Commune station (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, U.S.A.), etc. These systems are only used for conducting telewnting, or as multi-media communication systems in which telewriting is just a minor function, or as systems for studying cooperative work in distributed environment. At present, none of these systems is being widely used. We presume that the two reasons why these systems have not enjoyed widespread are, these terminals are expensive and also because of the minimal opportunities for using them. We think that, in order to make telewnting more widespread, it (i.e. telewriting) should be developed and implemented as one of the application programs for pen-based computers. We believe that our research is significant because it proposes a method for implementing a telewriting system and also shows how a pm-based computer can be used as a tool towards the realization of such a system. The telewriting system we developed can be used by connecting the terminal (pen-based computer) to LAN (Ethernet). At present, we are testing our system on the LAN in Tokyo Denki University. Also, we are using the telephone (within our university) in combination with