NeWs stuff
Bruce D. Becker
bdb at becker.UUCP
Thu Jun 27 06:51:24 AEST 1991
In article <131 at morwyn.UUCP> root at morwyn.UUCP (System Administrator) writes:
|Does anyone know what NeWs is, and is it something that would apply to the 3b1?
NeWS is a propretary product of Sun Microsystems,
and is somewhat similar in functionality to MGR
or X.
It differs in that it is based on Sun's RPC/XDR
remote procedure call/external data representation
software (source is freeware), and uses an extended
version of Postscript as the means of communication.
The language is interactive, multi-threaded, and
object-oriented - things are set up so that the
local server can be programmed by the remote client
so that hi-level functions can be performed on its
behalf, thus potentially optimizing client-server
traffic greatly.
Another problem besides its proprietary nature is the
relatively poor resolution of the screen, and the lack
of any grey scale. This is a lesser complaint, however;
the architectural concepts as a whole are what's really
interesting. These could be cloned or emulated, perhaps
even as an addition to MGR or something similar (thus
benefitting many other venues besides the 3B1).
IMHO, Sun screwed up royally w/respect to this system;
It was available before X & it was architecturally
superior (they actually implemented an X server in
Postscript as a demo). Had they made it into freeware,
the entire history of unix windows may well have gone
another way. I'd even venture to surmise that the
politics surrounding AT&T's using Sun for System V
Release 4 would have been different as well, and that
OSF might well have been nowhere near as politically
viable a concept as it actually later became.
--
,u, Bruce Becker Toronto, Ontario
a /i/ Internet: bdb at becker.UUCP, bruce at gpu.utcs.toronto.edu
`\o\-e UUCP: ...!utai!mnetor!becker!bdb
_< /_ "Ferget yer humanity, do the poot" - devo
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