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6495 discussions

by Alexis

David Rosenthal reflects on his involvement with the development of the X Window System: > Although most of my time was spent developing NeWS, I rapidly > ported X version 10 to the Sun/1, likely the second port to > non-DEC hardware. It worked, but I had to kludge several areas > that depended on DEC-specific hardware. The worst was the > completely DEC-specific keyboard support. > > Because it was clear that a major redesign of X was needed to > make it portable and in particular to make it work well on Sun > hardware, Gosling and I worked with the teams at DEC SRC and WRL > on the design of X version 11. Gosling provided significant > input on the imaging model, and I designed the keyboard > support. As the implementation evolved I maintained the Sun port > and did a lot of testing and bug fixing. All of which led to my > trip to Boston to pull all-nighters at MIT finalizing the > release. > > My involvement continued after the first release. I was the > editor and main author of the X Inter-Client Communications > Conventions Manual (ICCCM) that forms Part III of Robert > Scheifler and Jim Gettys' X Window System. -- https://blog.dshr.org/2024/07/x-window-system-at-40.html Alexis.

10 months, 1 week

Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

by Clem Cole

https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattles-living-computers-museum-logs-off-for… These folks hosted the UNIX 50th Celebration and had a physical PDP-7 that was used to bring up UNIX V0 (after first getting it running on SIMH). That later was not easy because the original PDP-7s (like the one Ken had access to) did not have disk storage. BTL had paid DEC's Custom Special Systems (CSS) to splice a Burrough's disk that DEC was selling using for the 15 and later the PDP-9. It started with splicing reverse engineering that code to build a simulation of that disk into the simh, so we could ensure that UNIX ran—finally, modeling that HW with a custom microprocessor-based board with an SD card with a functional replica of a PDP-7 I/O interface on one side obeying the device registers and operations that UNIX expected to see. The LCM-L folks were incredibly gracious and generous. I am so sad to see their collection go away. In particular, I hope the PDP-7s and the CDC-6500 find new homes. Clem

10 months, 2 weeks

most direct Unix descendant

by Andrew Lynch

Hi Out of curiosity, what would be considered the most direct descendent of Unix available today? Yes, there are many descendants, but they've all gone down their own evolutionary paths. Is it FreeBSD or NetBSD? Something else? I don't think it would be Minix or Linux because I remember when they came along, and it was well after various Unix versions were around. Does such a thing even exist anymore? I remember using AT&T Unix System V and various BSD variants back in college in the 1980's. System V was the "new thing" back then but was eventually sold and seems to have faded. Maybe it is only available commercially, but it does not seem as prominent as it once was. Any thoughts? Thanks, Andrew Lynch

10 months, 2 weeks

Re: On the term "justification"

by Douglas McIlroy

Oops, my last post ascribed Runoff to the 15th century, "sixty decades" ago. Doug

10 months, 2 weeks

Re: Documenting a set of functions with -man

by Douglas McIlroy

> The lack of a monospaced font is, I suspect, due either to > physical limitations of the C/A/T phototypesetter[1] or fiscal > limitations--no budget in that department to buy photographic > plates for Courier. Since the C/A/T held only four fonts, there was no room for Courier. But when we moved beyond that typesetter, inertia kept the old ways . Finally, in v9, I introduced the fixed-width "literal font", L, in -man and said goodbye to boldface in synopses. By then, though, Research Unix was merely a local branch of the Unix evolutionary tree, so the literal-font gene never spread. Doug

10 months, 2 weeks

The thread about standards is now closed

by Warren Toomey

All, I've decided to bring the ANSI C/POSIX thread to a close. While initially the thread was informative, it's recently become host to comments which are inappropriate and certainly well out of scope for a mailing list about UNIX and its history. If someone wants to resurrect a thread about standards, feel free to use the COFF list. But please, keep the conversation on-topic. Thanks, Warren

10 months, 2 weeks

another OSX 100% less Unix

by ron minnich

I have a directory, t: ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ ls -li total 0 23801442 -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a 23801443 -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b 23801443 -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c note that b and c are the same inode. let's make a cpio. ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ cpio -o >../t.cpio a b c ^D 1 block what's in it? ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ cpio -ivt < ../t.cpio -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c link to b "c link to b"? wtf? Who thought that was a good idea? because ... ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ touch 'c link to b' ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:22 c link to b and ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ cpio -o >../t.cpio a b c c link to b ^D ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ cpio -ivt < ../t.cpio -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c link to b -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:22 c link to b so ... it looks like a file is there twice, because somebody thought it was a good idea to confuse a file name and file metadata. And, anyway, it's just as accurate to have it say -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b link to c -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c link to b -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:22 c link to b Right? :-) From the same people who brought you this: ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ bc >>> Somebody needs to get the osx folks a unix manual set :-)

10 months, 2 weeks

Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Aron <aki(a)insinga.com> > Now if only his family would take those wishes of his into account and > tell the lawyers to finish the job. I suspect that was his real mistake; he trusted that his family would do what he wanted (perhaps so that instead of putting the final bow on this, he could pay attention to something else that was more important to him) after he was gone - and they decided not to. My suspicion is that there is something else that is more important to his sister (probably political), and she decided that the pittance she'd get from flushing the LCM would be better put towards her project(s). I've just been re-reading Thucydides' extraordinarily outstanding meditation on the revolution on Corcyra (which is really a meditation on the death of the Greek polei - and is a pre-epitaph on the death of many democracies since), and if my pupposition is correct, it applies to this too I wonder what'll happen to all the less-valuable stuff that was given to the LCM? A PDP-10 will fetch 10K's of $, but a lot of the rest is worth pennies. I hope they don't scrap it for pennies, or throw it in the trash. I'm sure that someone who would ignore her brother's wishes about important pieces of history that meant a lot to him would have no qualms about doing either. Noel

10 months, 2 weeks

ANSI (C) vs IEEE (POSIX) Standards Body Selection

by segaloco

Good morning, I was wondering if anyone has the scoop on the rationale behind the selection of standards bodies for the publication of UNIX and UNIX-adjacent standards. C was published via the ANSI route as X3.159, whereas POSIX was instead published by the IEEE route as 1003.1. Was there every any consideration of C through IEEE or POSIX through ANSI instead? Is there an appreciable difference suggested by the difference in publishers? In any case, both saw subsequent adoption by ISO/IEC, so the track to an international standard seems to lead to the same organizations. - Matt G.

10 months, 2 weeks

ACM Software System Award to Andrew S. Tanenbaum for MINIX

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

This announcement just arrived on the ACM Bulletins list: >> ... >> Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Vrije Universiteit, receives the ACM Software >> System Award (http://awards.acm.org/software-system) for MINIX, which >> influenced the teaching of Operating Systems principles to multiple >> generations of students and contributed to the design of widely used >> operating systems, including Linux. >> ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10 months, 2 weeks

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