16 May
2025
16 May
'25
4:01 p.m.
I'm curious if anyone has the scoop on this. To my knowledge the 1984
/usr/group standard constitutes the earliest attempt at a vendor-neutral UNIX
standard. AT&T then comes along in 1985 with the first issue of the SVID, based
largely on SVR2 from what I know.
What I'm not getting a good read on or not is if the SVID was literally a direct
response from AT&T to the creation of the /usr/group standard or if there was
already an impetus in AT&T's sphere of influence to produce such a definitive
document. In either case, AT&T does list the /usr/group standard as an
influence, but doesn't go into the detail of "we made this because
/usr/group's
standard exists" or "we made this ourselves and oh /usr/group also happens to
have a standard."
Even outside of this, did AT&T maintain anything comparable to the SVID in prior
years or was the manual essentially the interface definition?
Thanks for any recollections!
- Matt G.
16 May
16 May
5:57 p.m.
below.
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 12:01 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
I'm curious if anyone has the scoop on this. To
my knowledge the 1984
/usr/group standard constitutes the earliest attempt at a vendor-neutral
UNIX
standard. AT&T then comes along in 1985 with the first issue of the SVID,
based
largely on SVR2 from what I know.
There was a huge marketing campaign, "*System V. Consider it Standard*."
But the >>users<<, particularly those weaned on BSD, said
"hardly."
/usr/group was an attempt to deal with Ultrix, HP-UX, AIX, and, much less,
Sys III/V. SVID came later, and it was an attempt to force it down
people's throats.
The AT&T folks were sometimes a tad nasty at the POSIX meeting and wanted
IEEE to "just use it," and we say, "no. It's incomplete and just
plain
wrong is so many places." The whole tar/cpio stuff from /usr/group was a
great example of the start of it, but even things like trying to define a
directory entry was strained. SVID did not have the new UCB directory
system calls. For example, we all were certain that if we ever had a
different FS, we needed to remove physical formats from the specification.
There were no sockets, and yet nearly 100% of the working networking code
in the wild, including on MS-DOS, was using sockets.
The problem was that several people who came to the POSIX meetings
post-SVID from AT&T were from marketing and sales. At the same time, the
core of the original /usr/group and later POSIX teams were mostly
engineering types. The sales/mktg folks were trying to establish a brand,
the engineers were trying to solve an issue were we had code that did not
work between our different systems.
ᐧ
6:18 p.m.
further below
On 5/16/2025 12:57 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
below.
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 12:01 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org
<mailto:tuhs@tuhs.org>> wrote:
I'm curious if anyone has the scoop on this. To my knowledge the 1984
/usr/group standard constitutes the earliest attempt at a vendor-
neutral UNIX
standard. AT&T then comes along in 1985 with the first issue of the
SVID, based
largely on SVR2 from what I know.
There was a huge marketing campaign, "_/System V. Consider it Standard/
_." But the >>users<<, particularly those weaned on BSD, said
"hardly."
/usr/group was an attempt to deal with Ultrix, HP-UX, AIX, and, much
less, Sys III/V. SVID came later, and it was an attempt to force it
down people's throats.
The AT&T folks were sometimes a tad nasty at the POSIX meeting and
wanted IEEE to "just use it," and we say, "no. It's incomplete and
just
plain wrong is so many places." The whole tar/cpio stuff from /usr/
group was a great example of the start of it, but even things like
trying to define a directory entry was strained. SVID did not have the
new UCB directory system calls. For example, we all were certain that if
we ever had a different FS, we needed to remove physical formats from
the specification. There were no sockets, and yet nearly 100% of the
working networking code in the wild, including on MS-DOS, was using
sockets.
The problem was that several people who came to the POSIX meetings post-
SVID from AT&T were from marketing and sales. At the same time, the
core of the original /usr/group and later POSIX teams were mostly
engineering types. The sales/mktg folks were trying to establish a
brand, the engineers were trying to solve an issue were we had code that
did not work between our different systems.
"Convergence of AIX and 4.3BSD"
(https://technologists.com/sauer/Convergence_of_AIX_and_4.3BSD.pdf) was
another alternative to SVID that was intended to address a spectrum of
requirements. It was gratifying that AIX people, IBM BSD people and
Bruce Walker of LCC were able to reach consensus and put our names on
that paper.
Charlie
--
voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer(a)technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/LinkedIn/mas.to: CharlesHSauer
6:22 p.m.
On Friday, May 16th, 2025 at 10:58 AM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
below.
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 12:01 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
Insightful as always Clem, thanks for the background. To me that sounds more
like AT&T seeing the horse escaping the barn and trying to ensure they're a
relevant part of the conversation, more for the sake of marketing their system
and cornering things rather than a good faith attempt to improve and extend the
ideas being set forth by the /usr/group effort. Not to discount the good
intentions of plenty of folks involved, but that certainly sounds more like a
case of "shoot, we should be the arbiter of this information" for the sake of
their bottom line. My interpretation anyway.
Aside but I recently landed a copy of SVID Issue 1, previously I only had
Issue 3 (SVR4 era blue books, 5 volumes) and had seen auctions for Issue 2
that I didn't act on. Issue 1 is published in a nice hard cover, has a more
minimalist perspective pattern on the cover than Issue 2 and is only one
volume covering the C interface while mentioning future extension efforts
such as basic utilities and the like.
- Matt G.
P.S. While on the subject of SVID, just throwing out there that I have seen
auctions for a "Volume VI" in the Issue 3 era. No such volume is referenced
in any of the others and the one auction I jumped on never arrived. When
pressed on it the seller simply gave me a refund. This has all amounted to
doubt that such a volume actually exists, but I've seen at least one grainy
photo (because book sellers can't be bothered to show adequate pictures of
the books they're selling but expect $$$ anyway) that appeared to show a
cover saying "Volume VI" but in typical book seller fashion, it was far too
grainy and low resolution to make out any details. In any case, I share
this in the hopes someone might be familiar with what I'm talking about and
can confirm/deny the existence of a 6th volume in this set.
I'm curious if anyone has the scoop on this.
To my knowledge the 1984
/usr/group standard constitutes the earliest attempt at a vendor-neutral UNIX
standard. AT&T then comes along in 1985 with the first issue of the SVID, based
largely on SVR2 from what I know.
There was a huge marketing campaign, "System V. Consider it Standard." But the
>>users<<, particularly those weaned on BSD, said "hardly."
/usr/group was an attempt to deal with Ultrix, HP-UX, AIX, and, much less, Sys III/V.
SVID came later, and it was an attempt to force it down people's throats.
The AT&T folks were sometimes a tad nasty at the POSIX meeting and wanted IEEE to
"just use it," and we say, "no. It's incomplete and just plain wrong
is so many places." The whole tar/cpio stuff from /usr/group was a great example of
the start of it, but even things like trying to define a directory entry was strained.
SVID did not have the new UCB directory system calls. For example, we all were certain
that if we ever had a different FS, we needed to remove physical formats from the
specification. There were no sockets, and yet nearly 100% of the working networking code
in the wild, including on MS-DOS, was using sockets.
The problem was that several people who came to the POSIX meetings post-SVID from
AT&T were from marketing and sales. At the same time, the core of the original
/usr/group and later POSIX teams were mostly engineering types. The sales/mktg folks were
trying to establish a brand, the engineers were trying to solve an issue were we had code
that did not work between our different systems.
ᐧ 
7:01 p.m.
I was only slightly connected with the development of the POSIX standard,
and as has been mentioned here, AT&T was a full participant.
The real conflicts were in a related area and at the time were termed The
GUI Wars. Basically, it was AT&T and Sun pushing OpenLook and everyone else
pushing Motif. I seem to recall that the Motif folks (Open Software
Foundation) more or less forced IEEE to just accept Motif as a standard.
I was on a different committee that was trying to standardize a universal
GUI interface that could work on any GUI, including Mac, Windows, Motif,
and OpenLook. My product, XVT, was the base document. We never got past the
draft stage.
Marc
9:45 p.m.
Marc, you are right, but the OpenLook/Motif stuff was >>much<< later.
Matt asked about the SVID thing about 5-6 years before that.
The problem AT&T had was >>before<< Judge Green, they could not be in the
computer biz, so they "*abandoned the sources on your doorstep, with no
warranty of any kind.*" It was simply thatAT&T was not allowed to be in
the computer business* by law*. Post Judge Green boy did AT&T's management
>want<< to be in the computer biz, and they*
tried to use tactics *that
had often worked for the largest computer firm to date.
In fact, the firm
that Charlie Brown [the AT&T CEO] was quoted as saying, he wanted to
compete with and emulate IBM. If I recall correctly, he said something
about matching them move for move. UNIX had been AT&T's baby, and AT&T
wanted it back, but by then, the child had grown up and did not want or
need its parent anymore. A lot of the failed actions post Judge Green are
part of AT&T searching for a grip in a business its management team did not
understand, nor was prepared to be a part of.
The assumption was that before the breakup, they were the world's largest
company, and even after, the new AT&T was still larger in assets than IBM,
so they could compete. History proved otherwise. If they had used
different tactics, with the assets AT&T had in its quiver, they might have
been able to be a real force. But I think pride made them think that the
3B20 was going to be able to compete with a Mainframe (or even a Vax) —
mind you, their own people wanted Vaxen or later Suns. AT&T Management
seem to think that UNIX was the key, but AT&T had to be in charge of it.
The funny thing, is if AT&T management had taken a zen approach and
bolstered what everyone else was doing instead of trying to drive everyone
else away [Microsoft's famous "embrace and extend model"], and not tried
compete in the processor wars, but instead take on second source licenses
and start using their boundary; I something wonder if it might have had a
very different out come. They still would have needed to see the PC
revolution coming, which I'm not sure management types used to 40-50% gross
margin will ever under as 12-15% margin PC market (volume is everything)
market.
ᐧ
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 3:01 PM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I was only slightly connected with the development of
the POSIX standard,
and as has been mentioned here, AT&T was a full participant.
The real conflicts were in a related area and at the time were termed The
GUI Wars. Basically, it was AT&T and Sun pushing OpenLook and everyone else
pushing Motif. I seem to recall that the Motif folks (Open Software
Foundation) more or less forced IEEE to just accept Motif as a standard.
I was on a different committee that was trying to standardize a universal
GUI interface that could work on any GUI, including Mac, Windows, Motif,
and OpenLook. My product, XVT, was the base document. We never got past the
draft stage.
Marc
17 May
17 May
2:58 p.m.
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 6:26 PM Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
Sort of like when DEC finally recognized that people
were buying their
hardware to run UNIX. Still remember Armando getting up and saying
something to the effect that DEC hardware and UNIX had been synonymous for
years and that DEC finally noticed and the held up the first DEC UNIX
license (plate).
Clem Cole had--and still has--the Massachusetts UNIX license plate on his
car. I
don't know when he first got that plate. Armando had the New
Hampshire UNIX license plate. It was on a snazzy red Datsun 280 ZX. At
the time (early 1980s) I was driving a frumpy rust-bucket Datsun B210. I
had the New Hampshire VAXVMS license plate. Armando jokingly threatened to
park his sports car next to my car and take a picture of the two OS license
plates side-by-side.
AT&T's "consider it a standard" campaign was pretty successful in
getting
corporate executive types thinking about UNIX. Sort of along the lines of
the "Intel Inside" campaign, which actually got ordinary folks to care
about whose chip was in their PC.
But AT&T never was able to take advantage of the opening the "consider it a
standard" campaign provided. In addition to the reasons Clem cited, I
think AT&T simply never learned how to compete in an open market. They had
been a regulated utility monopoly for so very long.
-Paul W.
7:35 p.m.
Just for historical accuracy - I believe Bill Shannon first had the New
Hampshire UNIX plate and Armando got it after Bill moved to Sun.
Evidence: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FYR17LRpJNpSBCGv8
On Sat, May 17, 2025 at 7:59 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 6:26 PM Ron Natalie
<ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
Sort of like when DEC finally recognized that
people were buying their
hardware to run UNIX. Still remember Armando getting up and saying
something to the effect that DEC hardware and UNIX had been synonymous for
years and that DEC finally noticed and the held up the first DEC UNIX
license (plate).
Clem Cole had--and still has--the Massachusetts UNIX license plate on his
car. I
don't know when he first got that plate. Armando had the New
Hampshire UNIX license plate. It was on a snazzy red Datsun 280 ZX. At
the time (early 1980s) I was driving a frumpy rust-bucket Datsun B210. I
had the New Hampshire VAXVMS license plate. Armando jokingly threatened to
park his sports car next to my car and take a picture of the two OS license
plates side-by-side.
AT&T's "consider it a standard" campaign was pretty successful in
getting
corporate executive types thinking about UNIX. Sort of along the lines of
the "Intel Inside" campaign, which actually got ordinary folks to care
about whose chip was in their PC.
But AT&T never was able to take advantage of the opening the "consider it
a standard" campaign provided. In addition to the reasons Clem cited, I
think AT&T simply never learned how to compete in an open market. They had
been a regulated utility monopoly for so very long.
-Paul W.
9:36 p.m.
If we are going to be historical, I believe that I have had the
Massachusetts UNIX plate for at least 6 months before Shannon secured NH
(and have had them since). They have been displayed on eight vehicles,
currently on my '18 Model S/P100. Somewhere is a picture of our cars
parked next to each other, which would have been the first UNIXmobile, my
silver '79 Capri, which I also had at UCB. BTW: Goble had the Indiana UNIX
plate, but I'm not sure where in the sequence he was. wnj eventually had
California's VMUNIX plate, but that was after both Shannon and I, and I
think George. Jon Hall has the current NH UNIX plate and the NH LINUX
plate.
Interesting story, Mass used to allow a single plate, with nothing or
anything of your own choosing on the front. So, I used to have the
official Mass plate on the back and DEC plate on the front, which looked
like an NH plate. I got pulled over by a NH cop one time who was really
confused. The Commonwealth of Mass made me stop doing that about 20 years
ago. I'm on the 3rd set of plates (they changed colors once, the others
just faded), and it's really time for me to order a new set, but that means
dealing with the RMV, which is never fun.
Clem
ᐧ
ᐧ
On Sat, May 17, 2025 at 3:35 PM Tom Lyon <pugs78(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Just for historical accuracy - I believe Bill Shannon
first had the New
Hampshire UNIX plate and Armando got it after Bill moved to Sun.
Evidence: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FYR17LRpJNpSBCGv8
On Sat, May 17, 2025 at 7:59 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 6:26 PM Ron Natalie
<ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
Sort of like when DEC finally recognized that
people were buying their
hardware to run UNIX. Still remember Armando getting up and saying
something to the effect that DEC hardware and UNIX had been synonymous for
years and that DEC finally noticed and the held up the first DEC UNIX
license (plate).
Clem Cole had--and still has--the Massachusetts UNIX license plate on
his car. I
don't know when he first got that plate. Armando had the New
Hampshire UNIX license plate. It was on a snazzy red Datsun 280 ZX. At
the time (early 1980s) I was driving a frumpy rust-bucket Datsun B210. I
had the New Hampshire VAXVMS license plate. Armando jokingly threatened to
park his sports car next to my car and take a picture of the two OS license
plates side-by-side.
AT&T's "consider it a standard" campaign was pretty successful in
getting
corporate executive types thinking about UNIX. Sort of along the lines of
the "Intel Inside" campaign, which actually got ordinary folks to care
about whose chip was in their PC.
But AT&T never was able to take advantage of the opening the "consider it
a standard" campaign provided. In addition to the reasons Clem cited, I
think AT&T simply never learned how to compete in an open market. They had
been a regulated utility monopoly for so very long.
-Paul W.
18 May
18 May
1:28 p.m.
New subject: UNIX Plates
Of course, Amrando put one of the DEC license plates (complete with the
official expiration tabs) on the front of his car. It went missing for
a while and he inquired if anybody had seen it (which get worldwide
repsonse that it wasn’t in a lot of places). I think he eventually
recovered it.
------ Original Message ------
From "Clem Cole" <clemc(a)ccc.com>
To "Tom Lyon" <pugs78(a)gmail.com>
Cc tuhs(a)tuhs.org
Date 5/17/2025 5:36:06 PM
Subject [TUHS] Re: Was the SVID A Foregone Conclusion Pre-usr group?
If we are going to be historical, I believe that I have
had the
Massachusetts UNIX plate for at least 6 months before Shannon secured
NH (and have had them since). They have been displayed on eight
vehicles, currently on my '18 Model S/P100. Somewhere is a picture of
our cars parked next to each other, which would have been the first
UNIXmobile, my silver '79 Capri, which I also had at UCB. BTW: Goble
had the Indiana UNIX plate, but I'm not sure where in the sequence he
was. wnj eventually had California's VMUNIX plate, but that was after
both Shannon and I, and I think George. Jon Hall has the current NH
UNIX plate and the NH LINUX plate.
Interesting story, Mass used to allow a single plate, with nothing or
anything of your own choosing on the front. So, I used to have the
official Mass plate on the back and DEC plate on the front, which
looked like an NH plate. I got pulled over by a NH cop one time who
was really confused. The Commonwealth of Mass made me stop doing that
about 20 years ago. I'm on the 3rd set of plates (they changed colors
once, the others just faded), and it's really time for me to order a
new set, but that means dealing with the RMV, which is never fun.
Clem
>>
3:15 p.m.
New subject: UNIX Plates
On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 9:29 AM Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
Of course, Amrando put one of the DEC license plates
(complete with the
official expiration tabs) on the front of his car.
Was Armando living in New Hampshire at the time (he was working there)? If
so, that front UNIX license plate should have been the official NH one--NH
requires vehicles registered in the state to display both front and rear
license plates. But I wouldn't put it past Armando to put the DEC license
plate on the front as a joke. It would be unlikely to be noticed as a fake
by NH cops, especially if he had the official expiration tabs on it.
-Paul W.
4:15 p.m.
New subject: UNIX Plates
Yes, and That is exactly what he did. At one point.
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 11:16 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 9:29 AM Ron Natalie
<ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
Of course, Amrando put one of the DEC license
plates (complete with the
official expiration tabs) on the front of his car.
Was Armando living in New Hampshire at the time (he was working there)?
If so, that front UNIX license plate should have been the official NH
one--NH requires vehicles registered in the state to display both front and
rear license plates. But I wouldn't put it past Armando to put the DEC
license plate on the front as a joke. It would be unlikely to be noticed
as a fake by NH cops, especially if he had the official expiration tabs on
it.
-Paul W.
16 May
16 May
10:24 p.m.
I think AT&T's real problem was that the post-1984 UNIX business
was run by the lawyers. If you look at it, nearly every UNIX-related
fuckup on AT&T's part can be directly traced back to the lawyers.
If they had only listened to Shakespeare.
--lyndon
10:51 p.m.
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 4:24 PM Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) <
lyndon(a)orthanc.ca> wrote:
I think AT&T's real problem was that the
post-1984 UNIX business
was run by the lawyers. If you look at it, nearly every UNIX-related
fuckup on AT&T's part can be directly traced back to the lawyers.
If they had only listened to Shakespeare.
--lyndon
Hey, you forgot the TM on UNIX!
11:33 p.m.
Well, this is almost the same thing, but I think of it more as trying to
make money off of Unix. We lost the spirit of what made UNIX great when
it became about having the standard, dominant, market leading, version,
and all that nonsense. We might say first, get rid of all the marketers.
On 05/16/2025 03:51 PM, Marc Rochkind wrote:
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 4:24 PM Lyndon Nerenberg
(VE7TFX/VE6BBM)
<lyndon(a)orthanc.ca <mailto:lyndon@orthanc.ca>> wrote:
I think AT&T's real problem was that the post-1984 UNIX business
was run by the lawyers. If you look at it, nearly every UNIX-related
fuckup on AT&T's part can be directly traced back to the lawyers.
If they had only listened to Shakespeare.
--lyndon
Hey, you forgot the TM on UNIX!
17 May
17 May
2:03 a.m.
On Friday, May 16th, 2025 at 3:51 PM, Marc Rochkind <mrochkind(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 4:24 PM Lyndon Nerenberg
(VE7TFX/VE6BBM) <lyndon(a)orthanc.ca> wrote:
Is it really UNIX* discussion without
*UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories.
at the bottom of every third page?
- Matt G.
I think AT&T's real problem was that the
post-1984 UNIX business
was run by the lawyers. If you look at it, nearly every UNIX-related
fuckup on AT&T's part can be directly traced back to the lawyers.
If they had only listened to Shakespeare.
--lyndon
Hey, you forgot the TM on UNIX! 
18 May
18 May
6:14 a.m.
New subject: Whither XVT? [ From the SVID thread ]
Hi Marc,
Marc Rochkind <mrochkind(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I was on a different committee that was trying to
standardize a universal
GUI interface that could work on any GUI, including Mac, Windows, Motif,
and OpenLook. My product, XVT, was the base document. We never got past the
draft stage.
I think XVT also supported libcurses, no?
Around 1990-1991 I was in a start-up company and we looked at XVT
for the UI we wanted to write. I remember being in the confeerence room
on a phone call with you, and thinking how cool it was that we were
talking to one of those famous UNIX guys who'd been at Bell Labs.
A modern incarnation of your idea is the Qt toolkit, which lets one
write C++ UI (and more) code that runs the same on Windows, Mac, *nix,
and these days maybe even Android and iPhone.
In any case, is the XVT code around somewhere?
Thanks,
Arnold
2:55 p.m.
New subject: Whither XVT? [ From the SVID thread ]
Arnold,
I left XVT around 1992 or so and shortly after that it was absorbed into a
California company owned by XVT's VC investor. Then the XVT assets were
sold to someone and it was operated for some years as an independent
company, but I don't know what happened after that. I haven't had any
contact at all with XVT for over 30 years.
Poking around, I see this website:
https://providencesoftware.com/
where XVT seems still to exist. But that's just from Googling; I don't have
any other knowledge.
Indeed XVT supported character displays in addition to GUIs.
Marc
On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 12:14 AM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
Hi Marc,
Marc Rochkind <mrochkind(a)gmail.com> wrote:
--
Subscribe to my Photo-of-the-Week emails at my website mrochkind.com.
I was on a different committee that was trying to
standardize a universal
GUI interface that could work on any GUI, including Mac, Windows, Motif,
and OpenLook. My product, XVT, was the base document. We never got past
the
draft stage.
I think XVT also supported libcurses, no?
Around 1990-1991 I was in a start-up company and we looked at XVT
for the UI we wanted to write. I remember being in the confeerence room
on a phone call with you, and thinking how cool it was that we were
talking to one of those famous UNIX guys who'd been at Bell Labs.
A modern incarnation of your idea is the Qt toolkit, which lets one
write C++ UI (and more) code that runs the same on Windows, Mac, *nix,
and these days maybe even Android and iPhone.
In any case, is the XVT code around somewhere?
Thanks,
Arnold
3:54 p.m.
New subject: Whither XVT? [ From the SVID thread ]
Thanks for the info Marc.
Looks like Providence Software XVT is indeed a cross-platform
toolkit.
Marc Rochkind <mrochkind(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Arnold,
I left XVT around 1992 or so and shortly after that it was absorbed into a
California company owned by XVT's VC investor. Then the XVT assets were
sold to someone and it was operated for some years as an independent
company, but I don't know what happened after that. I haven't had any
contact at all with XVT for over 30 years.
Poking around, I see this website:
https://providencesoftware.com/
where XVT seems still to exist. But that's just from Googling; I don't have
any other knowledge.
Indeed XVT supported character displays in addition to GUIs.
Marc
On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 12:14 AM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
Hi Marc,
Marc Rochkind <mrochkind(a)gmail.com> wrote:
--
Subscribe to my Photo-of-the-Week emails at my website mrochkind.com.
I was on a different committee that was trying to
standardize a universal
GUI interface that could work on any GUI, including Mac, Windows, Motif,
and OpenLook. My product, XVT, was the base document. We never got past
the
draft stage.
I think XVT also supported libcurses, no?
Around 1990-1991 I was in a start-up company and we looked at XVT
for the UI we wanted to write. I remember being in the confeerence room
on a phone call with you, and thinking how cool it was that we were
talking to one of those famous UNIX guys who'd been at Bell Labs.
A modern incarnation of your idea is the Qt toolkit, which lets one
write C++ UI (and more) code that runs the same on Windows, Mac, *nix,
and these days maybe even Android and iPhone.
In any case, is the XVT code around somewhere?
Thanks,
Arnold
16 May
16 May
6:16 p.m.
As the Chair of the /usr/group Standards Committee
from its start in 1981 to 1984, I can say that we got all
of the major manufacturers of computer hardware
running the UNIX operating system involved in this
standards effort. This included AT&T, IBM, DEC, HP,
Sun, Intel, and many smaller mini-computer and
micro-computer hardware vendors. The /usr/group
Standard was the starting point for the POSIX 1003.1
standard developed by the IEEE standards organization
and first published in 1988. AT&T was very involved in
the development of both standards and would have
made every effort to make their operating system to be
compatible with the UNIX standards as they were developed
over the following years. Details would have to come
from AT&T.
Heinz
On 5/16/2025 9:01 AM, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
I'm curious if anyone has the scoop on this. To
my knowledge the 1984
/usr/group standard constitutes the earliest attempt at a vendor-neutral UNIX
standard. AT&T then comes along in 1985 with the first issue of the SVID, based
largely on SVR2 from what I know.
What I'm not getting a good read on or not is if the SVID was literally a direct
response from AT&T to the creation of the /usr/group standard or if there was
already an impetus in AT&T's sphere of influence to produce such a definitive
document. In either case, AT&T does list the /usr/group standard as an
influence, but doesn't go into the detail of "we made this because
/usr/group's
standard exists" or "we made this ourselves and oh /usr/group also happens to
have a standard."
Even outside of this, did AT&T maintain anything comparable to the SVID in prior
years or was the manual essentially the interface definition?
Thanks for any recollections!
- Matt G.
3
days inactive
5
days old
20 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Charles H Sauer (he/him) -
Clem Cole -
Heinz Lycklama -
Luther Johnson -
Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) -
Marc Rochkind -
Paul Winalski -
Ron Natalie -
segaloco -
Tom Lyon