tpn+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Tom Neuendorffer) (12/01/89)
The Andrew Toolkit (ATK) is a portable user-interface toolkit that runs under X11. It provides a dynamically-loadable object-oriented environment wherein objects can be embedded in one-another. Thus, one could use our 'generic-object' editor (ez) to edit text that, in addition to containing multiple fonts, contains embedded raster images, spreadsheets, drawing editors, equations, simple animations, etc.. These embedded objects could themselves contain other objects, including text. With the toolkit, programmers can create new objects that can be embedded as easily as those that come with the system. Many objects, including those mentioned above, along with a help system, a system monitoring tool (console), an editor based shell interface (typescript), and support for printing multi-media documents, are included in the release, making it useful to programmers and non-programmers alike. The upcoming X11-R4 release will also include an interface building system that facilitates the creation of multiple-object applications (Adew), an object-extension language (Ness), a hypertext-like link facility(Link), a charting facility(chart), and enhanced printing support that includes the automatic generation of tables of contents and indexes. The ATK source is distributed on the X11 tape in contrib/toolkits/andrew. Also included on the tape is the Andrew Message System(AMS), which provides a multi-media interface to mail and bulletin-boards. AMS contains many advanced features including authentication, return receipts, automatic sorting of mail, vote collection and tabulation, enclosures, audit trails of related messages, and subscription management. It also provides a variety of interfaces that support ttys and low-function personal computers in addition to the high-function workstations. The Andrew File System (AFS), is a networked file system that is largely transparent to the user and is capable of supporting thousands of computers. It allows independent and geographically distant organizations to share files while still permitting them to administer their data autonomously. AFS is not available on the X tape. Management and distribution of AFS is now being handled by Transarc, a Pittsburgh-based company specializing in distributed file systems. ATK, AMS and AFS were developed at the Information Technology Center (ITC) at Carnegie Mellon University. Additional information on these projects may be found in the proceedings of the Winter 1988 USENIX Technical Conference. The ITC is a joint project of CMU and IBM. Tom Neuendorffer