Abstract: A low-cost interactive colour graphics system that supports various application environments is described. Hardware assistance for multipicture management is provided, using a method that allows foreground-background display processing of pictures. The system has four display modes: colour graphics and/or colour character modes, pseudocolour image mode and animation mode. Most of the interactive functions, such as image/graphics inputting,, modifying and editing, are defined by the system software and an expandable graphic command language, thus permitting the exploration of different ways of using this kind of system.