grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) (08/04/90)
>>>>> On 4 Aug 90 03:24:33 GMT, mal@efbhp1.draper.com said: m> Nicholas John Williams <njt@ATHENA.MIT.EDU> writes >Following this, Dave Edmondson yesterday received a letter from Paul >Lippe, the vice president of Solbourne stating that he had "engaged in >unauthorized copying of Solbourne's virtual desktop utility feature". m> So where do we write to tell him (Mr. Lippe) what a swhmuck he is? m> PS. sorry about the unreferenced reply earlier ML --- I briefly used 'vtwm' (it crashed too much on my server) & I've played with the Solbourne virtual desk top feature, but I was under the impression that the virtual desktop concept was older than Solbournes implementation, in fact, that it dated back to XEROX PARC days. VTWM differs in certain ways that make the SWM (solbourne window manager) easier to use & some what better. E.g., each window has a ``nail'' widget specifying whether a window is nailed in the display or should move within the virtual desktop. This is somewhat similar to the f.nail function in VTWM. But then again, SWM looks a lot like TWM, which was done when Tom LaStrange was at E&S, and it copyrighted by them and MIT. Perhaps Solbourne is in fact violating someone elses copyright by beeing too close to the look and feel of TWM (although that software can be modified & sold according to the copyright). If it's a simple matter of ``look and feel'' violation rather than copying code, perhaps just changing the VTWM virtual window manager would suffice, e.g. don't make it be a default window, force binding it to a key to popup the virtual desktop manager, which IMHO, would be nicer anyway, because the VD manager is the first thing I always nail anyway. Actually, if it's ``look and feel'' then how does having a *different* interface (and it is different, as I noted) infringe on SWM? Dirk Grunwald -- Univ. of Colorado at Boulder (grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu) (grunwald@boulder.colorado.edu)
montnaro@spyder.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) (08/05/90)
In article <24334@boulder.Colorado.EDU> grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) writes:
I briefly used 'vtwm' (it crashed too much on my server) & I've played
with the Solbourne virtual desk top feature, but I was under the
impression that the virtual desktop concept was older than Solbournes
implementation, in fact, that it dated back to XEROX PARC days.
How do the vtwm and swm virtual destops compare to the xrooms program that
was posted in the last year? I found rooms an interesting concept. Without
having seen vtwm or swm, it sounds like rooms are about the same thing as
virtual desktops.
--
Skip (montanaro@crdgw1.ge.com)ron@woan.austin.ibm.com (Ronald S. Woan) (08/05/90)
What is different about this virtual desktop from the "rooms" feature provided by xrooms or gwm? Ron +-----All Views Expressed Are My Own And Are Not Necessarily Shared By------+ +------------------------------My Employer----------------------------------+ + Ronald S. Woan (IBM VNET)WOAN AT AUSTIN, (AUSTIN)ron@woan.austin.ibm.com + + outside of IBM @cs.utexas.edu:ibmchs!auschs!woan.austin.ibm.com!ron + + alternatives woan@peyote.cactus.org or woan@soda.berkeley.edu +
grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) (08/05/90)
From my brief use of 'xrooms', you could associate items with specific named ``rooms'' and open or close a given room. Virtual desktop are a flat area overwhich you can pan your display. A top-level ``virtual desktop manager'' shows you the entire virtual desktop, allowing you to pick up windows in the VTM and move them around. You can also pick up windows in the regular old TWM kind of way. This, it's a little easier for people to understand, although not really as useful as ``xrooms'' becausey you have to make a spatial association with the different windows, not a logical ones. I found that I made spatial relationships to model the logical ones (i.e. I'd keep all windows related to something in one area. I could as easily use room names).
janssen@parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen) (08/06/90)
In article <MONTNARO.90Aug4133252@spyder.crd.ge.com> montnaro@spyder.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) writes:
How do the vtwm and swm virtual destops compare to the xrooms program that
was posted in the last year?
In fact, Stu Card has mentioned to me that "Big Rooms" was one of the things he
and Austin Henderson tried (and rejected, for reasons I don't remember) while
working out the theories behind Xerox Rooms. "Big Rooms" was a large flat
2D surface on which all your "engaged tools" could be laid out. Your screen
gave a clipped view of the surface, and could be panned around to different
clusters of tools. This is pretty much what vtwm and the commercial release of
swm provide. Xerox Rooms, of course, provides a set of different spaces, each
populated with a set of engaged tools specific to the task being performed in
that space. An Overview facility allows one to inspect, edit, and traverse all
of the spaces. Session management for automatic saving and restoration of state
is built in. Rooms "Suites" allow sets of tasks to be saved and traded between
users.
Bill
--
Bill Janssen janssen@parc.xerox.com (415) 494-4763
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304toml@ninja.Solbourne.COM (Tom LaStrange) (08/06/90)
|> But then again, SWM looks a lot like |> TWM, which was done when Tom LaStrange was at E&S, and it copyrighted |> by them and MIT. Perhaps Solbourne is in fact violating someone elses |> copyright by beeing too close to the look and feel of TWM (although |> that software can be modified & sold according to the copyright). How does swm look a lot like twm? I know this doesn't have much to do with the original message but I would have to say that swm and twm are as different as apples and oranges. They're both window managers but in terms of look-and-feel, customization, and features, they're not even close. -- Tom LaStrange Solbourne Computer Inc. ARPA: toml@Solbourne.COM 1900 Pike Rd. UUCP: ...!{boulder,sun}!stan!toml Longmont, CO 80501
toml@ninja.Solbourne.COM (Tom LaStrange) (08/06/90)
|> How do the vtwm and swm virtual destops compare to the xrooms program that |> was posted in the last year? I found rooms an interesting concept. Without |> having seen vtwm or swm, it sounds like rooms are about the same thing as |> virtual desktops. For a description of swm and the Virtual Desktop, see the Summer 1990 USENIX proceedings: "swm: An X Window Manager Shell" -- Tom LaStrange Solbourne Computer Inc. ARPA: toml@Solbourne.COM 1900 Pike Rd. UUCP: ...!{boulder,sun}!stan!toml Longmont, CO 80501
grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) (08/07/90)
You're correct. SWM looks and feels like is a superset of TWM, allowing you to switch between Twm-ish, OpenLook and MWM behaviour. I had been thinking only of the Twm-ish portion of that.
tomw@orac.esd.sgi.com (Tom Weinstein) (08/07/90)
In article <24370@boulder.Colorado.EDU> grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) writes: > You're correct. SWM looks and feels like is a superset of TWM, > allowing you to switch between Twm-ish, OpenLook and MWM behaviour. I > had been thinking only of the Twm-ish portion of that. Yeah, but seems to me that Borland is being sued for something along just those lines. -- Tom Weinstein Silicon Graphics, Inc., Entry Systems Division, Window Systems tomw@orac.esd.sgi.com Any opinions expressed above are mine, not sgi's.
jef@well.sf.ca.us (Jef Poskanzer) (08/07/90)
In the referenced message, toml@solbourne.com wrote: }For a description of swm and the Virtual Desktop, see the Summer 1990 }USENIX proceedings: "swm: An X Window Manager Shell" Indeed. A very nice description, thanks. Now, to muddy the waters a bit more... In 1984 I designed and implemented an "Overview" window for Versatec's "Expert" 2-D drafting program. The functionality was similar to swm's Virtual Desktop. Two significant differences: swm lets you move windows into and out of the "map" window; Overview let you do resizes as well as moves. The name was suggested by my boss, John Dawson, a PARC alum, so he was probably thinking of the Overview feature of Xerox Rooms as mentioned by Bill Janssen. Or maybe not - when did Xerox Rooms come out anyway? Maybe they got it from us. Or maybe everyone thought up all the different variations on their own, since they are fairly obvious. In the patent law sense of the word obvious. By the way, Versatec took at least the first steps towards patenting this feature, so someone there thought it was patentable. I didn't, but I was just the programmer so no one listened to me. --- Jef Jef Poskanzer jef@well.sf.ca.us {ucbvax, apple, hplabs}!well!jef Do not remove this line under penalty of law.
zmacx07@doc.ic.ac.uk (Simon E Spero) (08/07/90)
In article <24370@boulder.Colorado.EDU> grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) writes:
You're correct. SWM looks and feels like is a superset of TWM,
allowing you to switch between Twm-ish, OpenLook and MWM behaviour. I
had been thinking only of the Twm-ish portion of that.
Configureable to look like twm, olwm, and mwm, huh? Sound's like a
definite ripoff of gwm- wonder how big their French legal division is?
Colas?
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zmacx07@uk.ac.ic.doc | sispero@cix.co.uk | ..!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!cix!sispero
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Poll Tax. | Saddam Hussein runs Lotus 123 on | DoC,IC,London SW7 2BZ
I'm Not. Are you?| Solbournes and Macs | +44-(0)71-931-7628
------------------------------------------------------------------------------pclark@SRC.Honeywell.COM (Peter Clark) (08/08/90)
How long has Solbourne been making 'virtual desktops'? There's some company that does the same thing for the Macintosh, and has been selling that since '87 or '88. I forget the name, but they also did the CloseView init that apple includes as system software. I'm betting that Solbourne aren't the first to do virtual desktops. Pete Clark Honeywell SRC Minneapolis, Mn
thoth@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Gilligan) (08/08/90)
Oh boy, the software nazis strike again. So lemme guess, They want
us all to buy licenses for swm, and if it won't run on our machines
then we'll just have to buy Their machines.
Come on, what is so patentable about the ability to push all of your
windows in one direction at once? If they don't chill out I'm going
to write a set of user-unfriendly utilities that replicate it. How
difficult is it to relocate all the windows on the screen?
foreach window
{
if (no TACKED_DOWN property)
if (iconic)
relocate icon
else
relocate window
}
There are ICCCM compliant ways to do this. Do they want to patent
these methods too?
--
/--------------------
"a window is a terrible thing to paste" -me
( My name's not really Gilligan, It's Robert Forsman, without an `e' )
--------------------/pjg@acsu.buffalo.edu (Paul Graham) (08/08/90)
grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu writes: | |You're correct. SWM looks and feels like is a superset of TWM, |allowing you to switch between Twm-ish, OpenLook and MWM behaviour. actually swm might be better characterized as offering either Motif or OpenLook decorations and characteristics -- as provided -- or a number of other interfaces within the limits of its configurability. it doesn't seem very much like twm (tom's window manager) or twm (tab window manager) to me at all. which is probably why i don't use it. i did spend some time getting it to be reminiscent of twm (tom's) but although i like the panner (and vtwm could do a better job of copying if that's what they like) i don't like it enough to give up twm (tab). actually the panner/virtual-desktop (i think the trouble must be about the panner since i'm sure lots of folks [me included] have had various ideas about virtual desktops, + multi-screens + etc., for some time) is neat. i'd like to know the origins of these ideas if they have some. i.e. did the people at parc(place) consider such a thing and then discard it and not really useful? if you have some pointers/annecdotes please mail them to me. [for those who haven't seen it] the "panner" is a small window that is filled with smaller rectangles. the largest of these represents the current visible portion of the "virtual" display and the visible portion is usually some small fraction of the total. scattered around this representation of the virtual display are smaller rectangles that represent floating open windows. in the "panner" you can click/drag things around (on/off/partially-on the screen), either open windows or the visible portion of the display (i.e. "pan" the viewport around). non-floating items are always fixed in the same place. i understand that other (non-x) versions of things like this let you perform all window manager functions, rather than just move, from inside the "panner". from my naive viewpoint a "panner" is just a variation on the icon-manager idea (or vice-versa).
bob@odi.COM (Bob Miner) (08/08/90)
How long has Solbourne been making 'virtual desktops'? There's some
company that does the same thing for the Macintosh, and has been selling
that since '87 or '88. I forget the name, but they also did the CloseView
init that apple includes as system software.
I'm betting that Solbourne aren't the first to do virtual desktops.
Pete Clark
Honeywell SRC
Minneapolis, Mn
Come to think of it, since the early 80's MacPaint has had a 'Show Page'
command which showed the entire page and allowed you to move a rectangle
representing the visible region around on the page. This is identical to
the virtual desktop which swm has. Perhaps Apple/Claris should sue Solbourne?
Bob Miner
bob@odi.comde5@STC06.CTD.ORNL.GOV (SILL D E) (08/09/90)
In article <9008081302.AA12614@hendrix.odi.com> bob@odi.COM writes: > >Come to think of it, since the early 80's MacPaint has had a 'Show Page' >command which showed the entire page and allowed you to move a rectangle >representing the visible region around on the page. This is identical to >the virtual desktop which swm has. Perhaps Apple/Claris should sue Solbourne? It's not the actual `virtual desktop' that's unique in Solbourne's implementation, or even the way you can move the viewport around to select the visible region, it's the way you can move windows into, out of, and around in the virtual desktop with the little scale-model of it. Has anyone done *that* before Solbourne? Does/did vtwm have that feature? -- Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov) These are my opinions. Martin Marietta Energy Systems Workstation Support
lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot) (08/10/90)
I am told that there is something similar on one of the Amiga Fish (PD) disks. -- Eliot Lear [lear@turbo.bio.net]