[comp.sys.mac.programmer] UNIX BLIT terminal emulator wanted for the Mac Plus

kent@circus.camex.com (Kent Borg) (10/30/90)

If you want to have more than one session on a Unix machine from a
Mac, try "uw".  It stands for "Unix Windows", I am using it right now,
it is great.

It requires server code running on the Sun and the uw application on
the Mac.  I use uw to login to the Sun, type "uw" to start up the
program on the Sun end, and I can have as many as 7 windows, each a
seperate session.

They all multiplex over the same serial line--be it a quick direct
connect here at work or a slow modem from home.

You can get uw from the usual ftp servers (so I am told, I don't have
ftp access), or from the list server at Rice (send the message "help"
to "listserv@icsa.rice.edu").


--
Kent Borg                            internet: kent@camex.com   AOL: kent borg
                                            H:(617) 776-6899  W:(617) 426-3577
"The prospect of their mass excites astrophysicists, who are always on the
 lookout for ways to make the universe heavier"   -- The Economist, 9-22-90

scotth@rocco.labs.tek.com (Scott Herzinger) (10/31/90)

> If you want to have more than one session on a Unix machine from a
> Mac, try "uw".  It stands for "Unix Windows", I am using it right now,
> it is great.

How does Unix Windows differ from MacLayers? ML supports file transfer.
Does UW? What about terminal emulation, resizeable windows, meta key
support, etc.?

Scott Herzinger   scotth%crl.labs.tek.com@relay.cs.net
                  Computer Research Lab, Tektronix, Inc.
                  PO Box 500 MS 50-662, Beaverton, OR 97077

bruner@sp15.csrd.uiuc.edu (John Bruner) (10/31/90)

In article <SCOTTH.90Oct30125023@rocco.labs.tek.com> scotth@rocco.labs.tek.com (Scott Herzinger) writes:
> How does Unix Windows differ from MacLayers? ML supports file transfer.
> Does UW? What about terminal emulation, resizeable windows, meta key
> support, etc.?

I can't really compare the two, because I've only played briefly with
MacLayers.  As the author of UW, I prefer to using it to MacLayers.

UW is considerably older than MacLayers.  The last release is dated
January 1988.  I became busy with too many other things since then,
and haven't been able to put together the "one final version" that
I've wanted to.  A significant omission from UW is file transfer.  In
the early days I was pretty dogmatic about not including it (for
reasons that I now feel were wrong).  Later I wanted to do it, but by
the time I started working on it seriously I was running low on time.
It should have been in version 4.2 (the last release), but it didn't
make it.

UW does have meta key support.  It will interpret Command-X as
Control-X unless a menu shortcut is defined for Command-X.  You can
use it on a Plus keyboard (with no Control key), or you can use it
with an ADB keyboard and define menu shortcuts.

UW provides up to seven resizable windows.  In the early days there
was often no way to inform the operating system about the window size,
so the windows can be resized in two ways: notify the O/S of the size
change, or always emulate 24x80 and only view the lower left corner.
The latter approach isn't used much these days, but sometimes it is
useful.

UW's primary terminal emulation (i.e., the one that I, its author,
use, and therefore the one most thoroughly debugged) is an ADM31.  I
chose this because it was easy to do and the escape sequences were
short.  This is a significant factor at low baud rates, and UW's
original mission was to provide a decent interface over a 1200 baud
dialup.  Given that UNIXes had termcap/terminfo databases, I didn't
think the choice of ADM31 terminal emulation was that important;
however, some people didn't agree.  Thus, it also provides a VT52
emulation and an ANSI subset.  Most people who use it complain that
the ANSI subset isn't close enough to a VT100 to be really useful to
them.

UW also emulates a Tektronix 4010 (not 4014, sigh), and has a special
"plot" emulation that directly interprets the output of the UNIX plot
library.

I don't think UW v4.2 runs on 64K ROM machines (but I'm not sure -- I
don't have one available to try it out).  It will run on anything
newer than that.  As far as I know, despite its age, it runs under the
current System software on all machines.

I've heard of problems running the UW server under SunOS 4.1.  I now
think I know what the problem might be, and I'll post a fix to the
UNIX server code when I find out.

UW is available via anonymous FTP from SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU.  It is
contained in eight files "info-mac/unix/uw-42-part[1-8].shar".  The
distribution includes the Macintosh client, (BSD) Unix server source
code, and documentation.  There is a reverse-engineered Atari client
for UW, but I have never seen it.
--
John Bruner	Center for Supercomputing R&D, University of Illinois
	bruner@csrd.uiuc.edu		(217) 244-4476