W Window System
The W window system is a discontinued windowing system and precursor in name and concept to the modern X window system.
| Original author(s) | Paul Asente, Brian Reid |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Stanford University |
| Operating system | V operating system |
| Successor | X Window System |
| Type | Windowing system |
W was originally developed at Stanford University by Paul Asente and Brian Reid for the V operating system. In 1983, Paul Asente and Chris Kent ported the system to UNIX on the VS100, giving a copy to those working at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science.
In 1984, Bob Scheifler of MIT replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous alternative and named the result X.
Since this time the X window system has gone through many fundamental changes and no longer bears any significant resemblance to W.
Other W window systems
There exists more than one window system named W. In 1995 Torsten Scherer released a suite dubbed W1R3; it has since been modified by Eero Tamminen and released as W1R4 under the GNU Lesser General Public License for the libraries, and the GNU General Public License for the rest.[1] This work postdates both W and X by many years, and has no code in common with either. It was used in the Yopy Linux PDA.
References
- "RELEASE.notes".
---- 1998 notes ------ This is an official W version 1, Release 4 based on my unofficial Release 4 sources. Libraries are now under LGPL copyright and the rest under GPL copyright.