6 Dec
2017
6 Dec
'17
3:23 p.m.
On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 7:00 PM, Robert Swierczek <rmswierczek(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I am also interested in the early development of
networked GUI's that
led to the X Window System. According to Wikipedia there was a W
Window System that predated X.
W which was done at Stanford and is definitely related to (direct parent
of) X Windows. Cheriton of course is the place to start, although I've
lost track of him. He's in the valley somewhere, he made billions funding
Google ;-)
V Kernel and the Stanford University Network (SUN) terminals were all
developed around the same time as W.
FWIW: Gettys & Schiefler might have of the W sources squirreled away - as
they started with them at MIT; but rejected it as the base for a set of
reasons which I forget now; but did take a number of the ideas. Jim showed
me a demo of early X and W side-by-side a long time ago. IIRC the basic
site protocol and the approach where the 'server' was on the local system
and the 'client' was remote came from W. [I'll try to ask Gettys what he
has off-line].
Clem