NeWS

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_armigeron.com>
Date: Fri Sep 8 18:09:43 2000

It was thus said that the Great healyzh_at_aracnet.com once stated:
>
> Shawn T. Rutledge wrote:
> > I'd like to play with the NeWS system, since I've never seen it and
> > am intrigued...
> >
> > My main interest is that I'd like to build a similar system for cross-
> > platform GUIs.
>
> So I guess my question would be what exactly is it?
>
  NeWS (NEtwork Window System or Network Extensible Windowing System, not
really sure which one) was written by James Gosling at Sun (and he's still
there, working on Java last I heard), probably around the time MIT was
working on the initial versions of X Windows.

  Like X it is server/client (only in these cases, the server is in front of
the user and the client could be down the hall. Most people think this is
backwards but technically it isn't) but because of Postscript, a client
could send code to the server and have it execute there instead of
transmitting packets back and forth (for example, Xeyes is a rather network
heavy program (a pair of eyes track the mouse cursor). Under NeWS, the
``eyes'' program could be set to the server and executed there, and thus no
network traffic at all be sent). Because of that, it could be used in low
bandwidth situations.

  Pitty it never took off, but I think licensing issues (from both Sun and
Adobe) pretty much killed it off.

  -spc (And it was surprisingly fast. At least on SGI hardware, which is
        where I only ever saw it ... )
Received on Fri Sep 08 2000 - 18:09:43 BST