jdb@mordor.ARPA (John Bruner) (09/30/86)
After ten months of planning, coding, debugging, hair pulling, and
assorted other things, I have finally put together a new distribution
of UW. It has taken much longer than I planned, and in order to
release it now I've postponed adding file transfer (which is
the number one item on the list for the next version). Part of
the reason for the delay was the total rewrite that UW underwent so
that new features could be added more cleanly.
UW is a multiple-window interface to UNIX (4.[23]BSD) for the
Macintosh. A program on the Mac interacts with a server process
on the host to provide up to seven independent terminal sessions.
Each terminal session is conducted in its own window. The windows
are independent, and can emulate an ADM-31, VT-52, a (subset of an)
ANSI terminal, or Tektronix 4010.
UW version 3.4 has a greater capacity for host-Mac interaction than
the previous version (v2.10). If the host understands window resizing
(4.3BSD and Sun UNIX do), then window size changes on the Mac can
optionally be passed through to the host. The cursor-addressible
terminal emulations are faster, although the Tektronix emulation is
slower.
UW v3.4 will not run on a 128K Macintosh. You should allow for at
least 256K, although in extreme cases even that may not be enough.
(I have not extensively tested it under Switcher.) It will run with
the old ROMs or the new ROMs. I have no idea if it will work with
third-party large screens (e.g. Radius).
There is a new server for UW v3.4, although the old server will work
with the new Macintosh program and the new server will work with the
old Macintosh program. (To take advantage of most of the new
features, both ends must be running the new software.) There are a
few utility programs ("uwtool" and "uwterm" create windows in
somewhat different ways, and "uwtitle" retitles existing windows).
There is also a UW library which can be used to build other utilities.
(The capabilities of this library are not fully utilized in this
release; consequently, it hasn't been tested as thoroughly as I would
have liked. Some of the future enhancements will draw more heavily
upon the library.)
The distribution is available now for anonymous FTP from S1-C.ARPA.
Connect to S1-C.ARPA and go to the (sub)directory "uw". The file
"uw.shar" is a text file which contains the entire distribution
(in "shar" format). The distribution is also available in nine
pieces (each smaller than 64Kbytes) named "uw.shar.1" through
"uw.shar.9". I invite the INFO-MAC moderator to copy the UW
distribution to the INFO-MAC archives, and I will send the 9-piece
collection to the USENET "mod.mac" moderator.
--
John Bruner (S-1 Project, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
MILNET: jdb@mordor [jdb@s1-c.ARPA] (415) 422-0758
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