A Sun touch screen solution has two parts:
A touch screen is a piece of glass about 1/8th inch thick which has the size and curvature that matches the edge-to-edge dimensions on the monitor's CRT (cathode ray tube) faceplate. It also exactly matches the curvature of the raw CRT.
The touch screen is actually secured to the faceplate of the raw CRT. The CRT is then reassembled and put back into its plastic casings. When completed, the touch screen will be invisible to anyone looking at the monitor.
The second essential part of a touch screen solution is a the touch screen driver software. Trident's touch screen software processes all data coming from the touch screen when it is touched. Trident's Sun drivers convert the touch data into mouse packets and direct those packets to the mouse handler code which is a module contained within the host server software. The mouse handler in the host server passes mouse events to whichever software is being run on the host. As far as application software is concerned, all it is seeing is a mouse transaction coming from the host. It has no way of knowing whether it came from a mouse or from a touch screen. This means that ANY software that uses a left button mouse command can immediately use touch screen input. Moreover, both mouse and touch are supported at the same time.