In 1989 the British DTI funded a project called HyperView. The project resulted in a development environment that linked a novel graphical interface system - InterActor - with a radical new language - Joshu.

The world was not ready for HyperView, but I have been continually reminded over the years how much better the InterActor model was then anything I have since used.

As the conceptualization and design of GPOView progressed it seemed that this was a good opportunity to carry out a re-implementation of InterActor as part the the Cut The Crap software development.

Based on Java 2D, the novel idea behind InterActor is to use the idea of "slots" to connect the graphical elements to construct the interface, rather than directly embedding one in another using parent-child references.

This is a simple idea, but one which has distinct advantages that can only really be appreciated through experience.