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From: Rich Morin <rdm@cfcl.com>
To: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] tangential unix question: whatever happened to NeWS?
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 13:07:27 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <A53D7EA5-614C-454F-AB59-107DAAACE1BF@cfcl.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAP6exYJi7nhy-DJQv1c=JiiTV=FrQZdzhqMRSm-zz3PrF1fgOA@mail.gmail.com>

John Gilmore probably has some interesting stories to tell regarding NeWS; his Grasshopper Group project ported it to A/UX on the Mac.  Don Hopkins and Hugh Daniel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Daniel) did the heavy lifting, IIRC.

I recall hearing that Gosling had to use GCC to compile NeWS.  It seems that the code had an enormous switch statement which spanned more than 64 KB.  The Sun C compiler used SPARC's location-independent conditional branches, which couldn't reach that far; GCC used a combination of branches and jumps, so it had no problem.

Aside from the use of PostScript and the enormous (for the time) resource demands, NeWS also suffered from economic and political issues.  It wasn't free (in any sense), so other vendors would have had to pay a substantial amount of money to use it.  Also, some other vendors were reportedly unwilling to give Sun yet another standards victory.

Too bad.  X won (at least in Unixish systems) and, as Rob Pike put it:  Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks.  Curiously, JavaScript (another Gosling effort) is in some ways the modern version of NeWS...

-r




  parent reply	other threads:[~2021-01-24 21:07 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 71+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-01-24 16:14 ron minnich
2021-01-24 16:24 ` Michael Kjörling
2021-01-24 17:04 ` Clem Cole
2021-01-24 18:36   ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 20:39     ` Ronald Natalie
2021-01-24 20:54       ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 21:01         ` Ronald Natalie
2021-01-24 23:38         ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-01-25  0:18           ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-25  0:36             ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-01-25  0:41               ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 20:45     ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-24 21:11       ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 21:14         ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-24 21:22           ` [TUHS] Apollo (was NeWS) Ronald Natalie
2021-01-24 21:25           ` [TUHS] tangential unix question: whatever happened to NeWS? Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 22:53             ` Dan Cross
2021-01-24 23:33               ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-25  0:11                 ` Al Kossow
2021-01-25  0:21                   ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-25 14:38                     ` Clem Cole
2021-01-25 15:31                       ` Al Kossow
2021-01-25 15:55                         ` Richard Salz
2021-01-25 16:04                           ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-25 16:37                             ` Dan Cross
2021-01-25 16:49                               ` Richard Salz
2021-01-25 17:11                               ` Bakul Shah
2021-01-25 17:25                               ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-29 20:24                                 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-29 20:31                                   ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-25 23:46                               ` John Gilmore
2021-01-29 19:53                               ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-25 22:25                           ` Rob Gingell
2021-01-26  1:38                           ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-27  3:11                             ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-27  3:54                               ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-27  5:15                                 ` George Michaelson
2021-01-27  5:52                                   ` George Michaelson
2021-01-27  5:48                                 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-01-27  6:19                                   ` Henry Bent
2021-01-27  7:28                                   ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-27 10:02                                   ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-27 18:32                                   ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-01-27 19:26                                     ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-01-27 15:47                               ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-27 16:40                                 ` Stephen Clark
2021-01-26  2:45                           ` John Cowan
2021-01-27 19:34                             ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-01-29 22:02                             ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-30  1:50                               ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-01-31  2:42                                 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-30  3:51                               ` Richard Salz
2021-01-30 23:20                                 ` John Cowan
2021-01-25 15:48                       ` Henry Bent
2021-01-25 14:33                   ` Clem Cole
2021-01-24 23:50             ` Ed Carp
2021-01-24 21:29       ` Al Kossow
2021-01-24 21:53       ` Lars Brinkhoff
2021-02-14  2:04       ` Greg A. Woods
2021-02-14  2:49         ` Jon Steinhart
2021-02-14  4:53           ` Rich Morin
2021-01-24 18:41   ` Toby Thain
2021-01-24 18:24 ` Dan Cross
2021-01-24 18:42   ` arnold
2021-01-24 19:11     ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 21:07 ` Rich Morin [this message]
2021-01-24 21:10   ` Ronald Natalie
2021-01-24 22:30     ` Rich Morin
2021-01-24 21:16   ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-28  2:48 Norman Wilson
2021-01-28  9:24 Noel Chiappa

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