[TUHS] Re: Four windowing systems on SunOS

["Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe@math.utah.edu>]

Larry McVoy reports today:

>> People like Sunview's api enough that there was an Xview toolkit which
>> was Sunview ported to X10/X11.

The interface was nicely documented in three editions of a book (I
have no entry for the second edition):

@String{pub-ORA                 = "O'Reilly \& {Associates, Inc.}"}
@String{pub-ORA:adr             = "981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164, USA"}

@Book{Heller:1990:XPM,
  author =       "Dan Heller",
  title =        "{XView} Programming Manual",
  volume =       "7",
  publisher =    pub-ORA,
  address =      pub-ORA:adr,
  pages =        "xxviii + 557",
  year =         "1990",
  ISBN =         "0-937175-38-2",
  ISBN-13 =      "978-0-937175-38-5",
  LCCN =         "QA76.76.W56 D44 v.7 1990",
  bibdate =      "Tue Dec 14 22:55:18 1993",
  bibsource =    "http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.bib",
  acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
}

@Book{Heller:1991:XPM,
  author =       "Dan Heller",
  title =        "{XView} Programming Manual",
  volume =       "7A",
  publisher =    pub-ORA,
  address =      pub-ORA:adr,
  edition =      "Third",
  pages =        "xxxvii + 729",
  month =        sep,
  year =         "1991",
  ISBN =         "0-937175-87-0",
  ISBN-13 =      "978-0-937175-87-3",
  LCCN =         "QA76.76.W56 H447 1990",
  bibdate =      "Mon Jan 3 17:55:53 1994",
  bibsource =    "http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.bib",
  series =       "The Definitive guides to the X Window System",
  acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
}

I have the first edition on a shelf near my campus office chair, and
continue to use olvwm as my window manager on multiple O/Ses, for 30+
years.

Every window manager designed since seems to fail to understand the
importance of user customizable, and pinnable, menus, which I exploit
to the hilt.  The menu customization goes into a single, easy to edit,
text file, $HOME/.openwin-menu.

Compare that to the Gnome desktop, with hundreds of files, many of
them binary, stored in hidden directories under $HOME, and for which
any corruption breaks the window system, and prevents login (except
via a GUI console).

Also. olvwm does not litter a default desktop with icons for
applications that many of use would never use: just a simple blank
desktop, with menu popups bound to mouse buttons.

With olvwm, you can have any number of virtual desktops, not just the
2 or 4 offered by more modern window manaugers, and unlike some of
those, windows can be dragged between desktops.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                                                          -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe@math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe@acm.org  beebe@computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
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