Resources for Rolling Your Own Windowing System?

WalterGR asks: "There are plenty of resources available for writing operating systems, e.g. Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems, the Dinosaur Book, and countless web sites. For those of us who aren't interested in low-level issues, and prefer focusing on human-computer interaction, what resources are available for designing windowing systems (a la X Window)? Issues like the object hierarchy, event management, modularity, redefining behavior at runtime (e.g. for skins) etc. Any suggestions?"

Comments

Just wanted to point out...

[2nd Post!]

That windowing systems and HCI are distinct. Windowing systems is a component of HCI, but so is command line interfaces, voice interfaces, and graphical interfaces.

Windowing systems is one metaphor applied to graphical interfaces. HCI includes the concepts of learnability, consistent behavior, teachability, and useability.

I'm defining learnability as the capacity for the system to teach the user, and teachability is the capacity for the system to adapt to the user.

Windowing systems doesn't necessarily have anything to do with any of those four points unless the designer and developer choses to address those points. Themes and skins count as teachable, adaptable systems, but do not necessarily mean the system is useable, powerful, or capable.