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, 9-22-90scotth@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
touch@dsl.cis.upenn.edu (Joe Touch) (10/31/90)
In article <SCOTTH.90Oct30125023@rocco.labs.tek.com> scotth@rocco.labs.tek.com (Scott Herzinger) writes: >> 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 Don't waste your time on MacLayers. It won't work on anything but 8-bit/no parity systems, and when I asked them about it, they complained it was a _bug_ (it never did work - I call that poor programming). One wonders what other bugs they want us to find for them, perhaps in their other 'features'. UnixWindows is old, but it DOES work. Joe
kent@circus.camex.com (Kent Borg) (11/01/90)
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.? On a feature comparison, MacLayers clearly beats uw, and if you need file transfer get a copy of MacLayers (probably from the standard ftp and list server sites). From a user's prespective, uw is better. It is simply much better designed. Much cleaner. When MacLayers came down the net I eagerly tried it--and didn't like it. On the Mac end it committed various user interface crimes and on the Unix end it seem to keep its server running after I logged off. I was probably doing something wrong, but with uw I didn't have as many problems. I went back to uw. I wish Mr. Bruner would add a few more features and do as good a job with them as he did with the overall program. Conclusion: If you have to do file transfer or scroll back in your windows, get MacLayers. If you want a cleaner program that is missing those features, get uw. Or, get both and then decide. -- 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