From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 15733 invoked from network); 27 Jan 2021 04:58:53 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 27 Jan 2021 04:58:53 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id BB5BE9B9A8; Wed, 27 Jan 2021 14:58:47 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 692669B720; Wed, 27 Jan 2021 14:58:16 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 56F289B720; Wed, 27 Jan 2021 14:58:13 +1000 (AEST) X-Greylist: delayed 3843 seconds by postgrey-1.36 at minnie.tuhs.org; Wed, 27 Jan 2021 14:58:12 AEST Received: from fourwinds.com (fourwinds.com [63.64.179.162]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 289759B715 for ; Wed, 27 Jan 2021 14:58:12 +1000 (AEST) Received: from darkstar.fourwinds.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fourwinds.com (8.15.2/8.15.2) with ESMTPS id 10R3s8iH1128210 (version=TLSv1.3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT) for ; Tue, 26 Jan 2021 19:54:08 -0800 Received: from darkstar.fourwinds.com (jon@localhost) by darkstar.fourwinds.com (8.15.2/8.15.2/Submit) with ESMTP id 10R3s8Z01128207 for ; Tue, 26 Jan 2021 19:54:08 -0800 Message-Id: <202101270354.10R3s8Z01128207@darkstar.fourwinds.com> From: Jon Steinhart To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society In-reply-to: References: <20210124183653.GD21030@mcvoy.com> <202101242045.10OKjDvA964774@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <20210124211100.GI21030@mcvoy.com> <202101242114.10OLEYGk966708@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <20210124212525.GJ21030@mcvoy.com> <202101242333.10ONXjcI974038@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <202101250021.10P0L3Z2976588@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <6557f782-ecb1-6476-1eda-e23f30f9bbea@bitsavers.org> <202101260138.10Q1ceo21049597@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Comments: In-reply-to Dave Horsfall message dated "Wed, 27 Jan 2021 14:11:26 +1100." MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <1128205.1611719648.1@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 19:54:08 -0800 X-JON-SPAM: local delivery Subject: Re: [TUHS] tangential unix question: whatever happened to NeWS? X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" Dave Horsfall writes: > > Ugh! I've seen some ugly windowing systems in my time, but X... Heck, > even CP/M had a better system, IIRC. Talk about heavyweight; how many > lines of code were required to write "Hello, world"? Well, as I've said before, I think that it's our job as geezers in the field to help younger folks learn to design and build things in a better way. Hard to figure out how to do this effectively given the huge push to turn out lots of low-quality coders so that they don't have to be paid much above minimum wage. Found a listing on actual prehistoric line printer paper that seems to indicate that my copy of the NeWS source, if readable, dates back to 1985. Don't know what the provenance of this code is; it's not something that I had around from doing some work on X/NeWS so I'm not sure why I have it. One of the things that I'll hopefully find during basement archeology is a paper by Gosling about a tool that we wrote to go along with NeWS. Don't remember what it was called, but it was a preprocessor that allowed one to specify things about the (graphics) hardware, and would, for example, automatically unroll certain loops where there would be a benefit. This allowed different hardware to be driven efficently from a single hunk of source code without #ifdefs all over the place. Also, I do have a couple of notebooks of stuff from V and W that I can scan in if it's not available elsewhere. Oh, wow, and an original IRIS-4D paper from Silicon Graphics, and the programming manual for Imagen laser printers. Jon