mark.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay@sri-unix (09/10/82)
From: Mark Weiser <mark.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay> Date: 7 Sep 82 23:32:43-EDT (Tue) This is a popular topic. I also have window manager, which based on your unix wizards description is less portable than yours but also more flexible. The difference is, the Maryland Window Shell (wsh for short) uses multiplexed files to simulate a complete terminal environment in each window, so full screen editors like vi and games like rogue and pacman can run in the windows. The window management communicates to the wsh with a standard protocol which allows the window management to be offloaded to a sufficiently smart terminal. We have done this with a home-brew bitmapped display supported by a 68000 processor, and boy do the windows fly. The non-offloaded window manager uses termcap. Ordinary user processes can do ioctl's within windows as they would to a terminal, and also can do special ioctl's for things like open a new window, move a window, etc. We have distributed this to one or two places so far, but are not ready for more until we see how those work out. Our Lisp Flavors package is integrated into the wsh, and there are C callable routines for making menus and such. Like yours, our windows are smalltalky (overlapping, etc.) Since you and I are so close, Rob, let's get together and compare notes. I will be at NRL on the 20th or so talking about Zmob--how about then?