The present invention relates to providing a uniform operating environment for each of multiple devices by providing a common environment to the devices. The elastic layer is formed from a porous material that contains a plurality of cells. Item selection in the marker portion is determined by the pattern of a stroke made by the pointing device with the system ignoring linear menu items across which the stroke completely passes. If a record exists that corresponds to the request identifier, then the primary replica responds to the first request with a reply associated with the record. The text specification unit specifies a text in the displayed list as a specific text on the basis of a user operation.