[comp.windows.x] Motif's history?

news@rphroy.UUCP (news) (09/07/90)

I was tracing X's history - Athena project etc. and the fact that X was
inspired
by W from Stanford. (reminiscent of UNIX - a pun on multics).

I know that motif came from User Environment Component of OSF
and was primarily based on DEC/HP submissions. Does anybody know where the word
'motif' came from?

Arvind Sabharwal             ___     Phone: (313)986-1959   Fax:(313)986-2661
Computing Systems Dept. .___/___\_   CSNet: arvind@gmr.com
GM Research Labs        /_________\  UUCP: sharkey!cfctech!rphroy!rcsunb!arvind
Warren, MI 48090 USA      o      o   Internet: arvind@ss0.eng.wayne.edu

argv@turnpike.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan Heller) (09/08/90)

In article <33058@rphroy.UUCP> rphroy!rcsunb!arvind (Arvind Sabharwal) writes:
> I was tracing X's history - Athena project etc. and the fact that X was
> inspired
> by W from Stanford. (reminiscent of UNIX - a pun on multics).

At the time, Stanford had a distributed -operating system- call V.
Actually, it was called "the V system" (not system V :-) and their
corresponding distributed windowing system was called Y.  They had
a paper (which I had a copy of) called "Y not X" (clever) and it
described what was wrong with the X protocol and why Y was better.
I've completely forgotten everything about it since I was more
interested in the V system more. :-(

I saw a demo of Y running on a (gasp) sun-1 that had a 68010 *upgrade*
and a client app was running on a uVAX buildings away.  It was compared
against Suntools (before sunview) and was quite reasonable.  The main
problem, it cost $300 to license and my company wouldn't splurge...

--
dan
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