OpenGL is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.
Wine is a free and open-source compatibility layer to allow application software and computer games developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Developers can compile Windows applications against WineLib to help port them to Unix-like systems. Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse-engineering, to avoid copyright issues. No code emulation or virtualization occurs. Wine is primarily developed for Linux and macOS.
OpenStep is an object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification developed by NeXT. It provides a framework for building graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and developing software applications. OpenStep was designed to be platform-independent, allowing developers to write code that could run on multiple operating systems, including NeXTSTEP, Windows NT, and various Unix-based systems. It has influenced the development of other GUI frameworks, such as Cocoa for macOS, and GNUstep.
GNUstep is a free software implementation of the Cocoa Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project.
In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphical shell. The desktop environment was seen mostly on personal computers until the rise of mobile computing. Desktop GUIs help the user to easily access and edit files, while they usually do not provide access to all of the features found in the underlying operating system. Instead, the traditional command-line interface (CLI) is still used when full control over the operating system is required.
In computing, cross-platform software is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software requires a separate build for each platform, but some can be directly run on any platform without special preparation, being written in an interpreted language or compiled to portable bytecode for which the interpreters or run-time packages are common or standard components of all supported platforms.
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is the foundational application programming interface (API) that allows a computer program to access the features of the Microsoft Windows operating system in which the program is running. Programs access API functionality via dynamic-link library (DLL) technology.
OPEN LOOK is a graphical user interface (GUI) specification for UNIX workstations. It was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T Corporation.
WebObjects is a discontinued Java web application server and a server-based web application framework originally developed by NeXT Software, Inc.
The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a graphical widget toolkit for use with the Java platform. It was originally developed by Stephen Northover at IBM and is now maintained by the Eclipse Foundation in tandem with the Eclipse IDE. It is an alternative to the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) and Swing Java graphical user interface (GUI) toolkits provided by Sun Microsystems as part of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE).
In software engineering, a compatibility layer is an interface that allows binaries for a legacy or foreign system to run on a host system. This translates system calls for the foreign system into native system calls for the host system. With some libraries for the foreign system, this will often be sufficient to run foreign binaries on the host system. A hardware compatibility layer consists of tools that allow hardware emulation.
Object Pascal is an extension to the programming language Pascal that provides object-oriented programming (OOP) features such as classes and methods.
The System Object Model (SOM) is an object-oriented shared library technology developed by IBM that supports defining an interface to an object so that its interface is separate from its implementation.
Windows Forms (WinForms) is a free and open-source graphical (GUI) class library included as a part of Microsoft .NET, .NET Framework or Mono, providing a platform to write client applications for desktop, laptop, and tablet PCs. While it is seen as a replacement for the earlier and more complex C++ based Microsoft Foundation Class Library, it does not offer a comparable paradigm and only acts as a platform for the user interface tier in a multi-tier solution.
The Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) is Java's original platform-dependent windowing, graphics, and user-interface widget toolkit, preceding Swing. The AWT is part of the Java Foundation Classes (JFC) — the standard API for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for a Java program. AWT is also the GUI toolkit for a number of Java ME profiles. For example, Connected Device Configuration profiles require Java runtimes on mobile telephones to support the Abstract Window Toolkit.
An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build such a connection or interface is called an API specification. A computer system that meets this standard is said to implement or expose an API. The term API may refer either to the specification or to the implementation.
Windows Runtime (WinRT) is a platform-agnostic component and application architecture first introduced in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 in 2012. It is implemented in C++ and officially supports development in C++, Rust/WinRT, Python/WinRT, JavaScript-TypeScript, and the managed code languages C# and Visual Basic (.NET) (VB.NET).
Mono is a free and open-source software framework that aims to run software made for the .NET Framework on Linux and other OSes. Originally by Ximian which was acquired by Novell, it was later developed by Xamarin which was acquired by Microsoft. In August 2024, Microsoft transferred ownership of Mono to WineHQ.
In software development, a polyfill is code that implements a new standard feature of a deployment environment within an old version of that environment that does not natively support the feature. Most often, it refers to JavaScript code that implements an HTML5 or CSS web standard, either an established standard on older browsers, or a proposed standard on existing browsers. Polyfills are also used in PHP and Python.
