UNIX Futures

[Stanley Friesen]

In article <156 at cad.UUCP> faustus at cad.UUCP (Wayne A. Christopher) writes:
>> 	Actually, a properly implemented windowing system should
>> SIGSTP all processes not in active windows.
>> system is best placed in the kernel where it does require a special
>> process.
>
>I don't think you really mean that first comment -- the whole point of having
>windows is so that you can have some things running in the background
>Also, I see no reason to put window management in the kernel -- X (which
>I consider the best available window system) has no problems running
>in user mode.  Comments?
>
	Several people seem to have misunderstood the first point, so
I will attempt to clarify it. I didn't mean that *all* non-foreground
windows should be considered inactive, only those that are interactive
or are selected by the user for inactivation. That is, since BSD UNIX
supports three classes of jobs, foreground, background, and stopped,
so should the windowing system. Without all three a windowing system
*doesn't* have the full capability of Job Control and I would therefor
still require it.
	The second point was a quick "impression" giving few details.
After giving the matter more thought what I would like see is for the
low level primitives for managing windows to be placed in the kernel.
That is the ability to create, update, and display windows should be
part of the I/O system, preferably as extensions to the tty device
drivers. Then the window session manager would be implemented as a
user mode program. In fact it should be integrated with the command
interpreter to produce a Window Shell. This way you get a single
login process, a unified history mechanism and an integrated control
interface. You also get the ability for user programs to create and
manipulate windows if they need to. (P.S. subshells should probably be
"normal", non-windowing shells running in thier own window).
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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