7 Sep
2020
7 Sep
'20
11:43 a.m.
On Sep 7, 2020, at 6:24 AM, dstalk at execulink.com wrote:
The description I have for AUIS (6.3.1) is:
"AUIS (Andrew User Interface System) - compound document
environment offering a word processor, mail/bulletin board
reader/writer, drawing editor, spreadsheet, font editor,
application builder, and many other facilities"
Again, an application, not a windowing system per se.
Yes, the Andrew environment implemented proper layering, so ATK was made to work atop X
and the applications (messages, ez, console, typescript, etc.) came along.
At Carnegie Mellon in the early 1990s, you could (with only a little work, to use a
console rather than graphical login) use either X or wm on some of the campus
workstations. On a DECstation 3100 running Ultrix, if you weren?t going to run any X
applications wm was *much* more responsive. I wasn?t around when the clusters had Sun-3 or
IBM RT hardware but I can imagine the differences there were even more pronounced. (With
wm, a DECstation felt as much faster than a Mac II as it actually was?)
Applications built against ATK could run atop either wm or X; I don?t know if there were
distinct builds of ATK or if the conditional logic was in the framework itself, but the
applications themselves worked just fine with either since Andrew implemented a shared
library mechanism. (Yes, even on Ultrix.)
The publicly-released Andrew distributions don?t include the wm code, only the X version.
I don?t know if they?ll actually build against the wm headers and libraries if they?re
present, or if by the time CMU was releasing them publicly they had stripped that code out
entirely.
? Chris
7 Sep
7 Sep
12:10 p.m.
m?n 2020-09-07 klockan 11:43 -0700 skrev Chris Hanson via cctalk:
On Sep 7, 2020, at 6:24 AM, dstalk at execulink.com
wrote:
The hackers in the lab in Ume? Sweden said the same thing about X11
vs Sunview on the lab's 3/60 and 3/80 machines compared with the 1(+?).
Running Sun's debug tool (in its sunview version) on a 3/60 were ok, no
lag dito starting sunview's cmdtool , while xterm werent so snappy on
the same machine.
The description I have for AUIS (6.3.1) is:
"AUIS (Andrew User Interface System) - compound document
environment offering a word processor, mail/bulletin board
reader/writer, drawing editor, spreadsheet, font editor,
application builder, and many other facilities"
Again, an application, not a windowing system per se.
Yes, the Andrew environment implemented proper layering, so ATK was
made to work atop X and the applications (messages, ez, console,
typescript, etc.) came along.
At Carnegie Mellon in the early 1990s, you could (with only a little
work, to use a console rather than graphical login) use either X or
wm on some of the campus workstations. On a DECstation 3100 running
Ultrix, if you weren?t going to run any X applications wm was *much*
more responsive. I wasn?t around when the clusters had Sun-3 or IBM
RT hardware but I can imagine the differences there were even more
pronounced. (With wm, a DECstation felt as much faster than a Mac II
as it actually was?) 
12:29 p.m.
Has anybody even been able to get the X-based version to build? I remember
finding it on some Unix/Linux source code CD-ROM like 20 years ago,
thinking it sounded useful and cool, and trying to build it on whatever
Linux I was using on my hand-me-down 486 back in 1999/2000. Even back then,
it didn't build for me.
Mike
On Mon, Sep 7, 2020, 2:44 PM Chris Hanson via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On Sep 7, 2020, at 6:24 AM, dstalk at execulink.com
wrote:
The description I have for AUIS (6.3.1) is:
"AUIS (Andrew User Interface System) - compound document
environment offering a word processor, mail/bulletin board
reader/writer, drawing editor, spreadsheet, font editor,
application builder, and many other facilities"
Again, an application, not a windowing system per se.
Yes, the Andrew environment implemented proper layering, so ATK was made
to work atop X and the applications (messages, ez, console, typescript,
etc.) came along.
At Carnegie Mellon in the early 1990s, you could (with only a little work,
to use a console rather than graphical login) use either X or wm on some of
the campus workstations. On a DECstation 3100 running Ultrix, if you
weren?t going to run any X applications wm was *much* more responsive. I
wasn?t around when the clusters had Sun-3 or IBM RT hardware but I can
imagine the differences there were even more pronounced. (With wm, a
DECstation felt as much faster than a Mac II as it actually was?)
Applications built against ATK could run atop either wm or X; I don?t know
if there were distinct builds of ATK or if the conditional logic was in the
framework itself, but the applications themselves worked just fine with
either since Andrew implemented a shared library mechanism. (Yes, even on
Ultrix.)
The publicly-released Andrew distributions don?t include the wm code, only
the X version. I don?t know if they?ll actually build against the wm
headers and libraries if they?re present, or if by the time CMU was
releasing them publicly they had stripped that code out entirely.
? Chris
2:04 p.m.
On Mon Sep 7 15:29:51 2020 cctalk at classiccmp.org (Michael Kerpan via cctalk) wrote:
Has anybody even been able to get the X-based version to build? I remember
finding it on some Unix/Linux source code CD-ROM like 20 years ago,
thinking it sounded useful and cool, and trying to build it on whatever
Linux I was using on my hand-me-down 486 back in 1999/2000. Even back then,
it didn't build for me.
Mike
The version that came with Yggdrasil Linux back in 1993 included
binaries ans source. That distro had 0.99.13 kernel, gcc-2.4.5, and
XFree86-1.2. So, it did build at one time.
don
2:26 p.m.
On Sep 7, 2020, at 2:04 PM, Don Stalkowski via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Mon Sep 7 15:29:51 2020 cctalk at classiccmp.org (Michael Kerpan via cctalk) wrote:
I want to say that it was included with SLS as well in ?92/93. Really the main thing I
remember about CMU Andrew was AFS. I had to work with that from late ?96, until I think
2005.
Zane
Has anybody even been able to get the X-based version to build? I remember
finding it on some Unix/Linux source code CD-ROM like 20 years ago,
thinking it sounded useful and cool, and trying to build it on whatever
Linux I was using on my hand-me-down 486 back in 1999/2000. Even back then,
it didn't build for me.
Mike
The version that came with Yggdrasil Linux back in 1993 included
binaries ans source. That distro had 0.99.13 kernel, gcc-2.4.5, and
XFree86-1.2. So, it did build at one time.
3:25 p.m.
AFS is also cool, but it's a separate project that's still actively
maintained and (presumably) used. The Andrew UI stuff is more firmly in the
realm of computer history. Honestly, I'm surprised that it didn't get more
traction early on Linux, given that it was included in some of the more
influential early distros and it included a more complete set of apps than
anything else that you could get for free at the time. That said, it's also
a shame that IBM wouldn't allow the native window manager to be released
like the rest of the system. It probably would have been a better fit for
PC hardware of the early to mid 90s than X11...
Mike
On Mon, Sep 7, 2020, 5:26 PM Zane Healy <healyzh at avanthar.com> wrote:
I want to say that it was included with SLS as well in ?92/93. Really the
main thing I remember about CMU Andrew was AFS. I had to work with that
from late ?96, until I think 2005.
Zane
On Sep 7, 2020, at 2:04 PM, Don Stalkowski via
cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Mon Sep 7 15:29:51 2020 cctalk at classiccmp.org (Michael Kerpan via
cctalk)
wrote:
>
> Has anybody even been able to get the X-based version to build? I
remember
> finding it on some Unix/Linux source code
CD-ROM like 20 years ago,
> thinking it sounded useful and cool, and trying to build it on whatever
> Linux I was using on my hand-me-down 486 back in 1999/2000. Even back
then,
it
didn't build for me.
Mike
The version that came with Yggdrasil Linux back in 1993 included
binaries ans source. That distro had 0.99.13 kernel, gcc-2.4.5, and
XFree86-1.2. So, it did build at one time. 
8 Sep
8 Sep
3:25 a.m.
tis 2020-09-08 klockan 06:09 +0000 skrev Lars Brinkhoff via cctalk:
Michael Kerpan wrote:
So does Chalmers, at least two years ago, the student
data pool was AFS.
AFS is also cool, but it's a separate project
that's still actively
maintained and (presumably) used.
MIT uses it, as does the student organization Stacken.
3:24 a.m.
m?n 2020-09-07 klockan 15:29 -0400 skrev Michael Kerpan via cctalk:
Has anybody even been able to get the X-based version
to build? I
remember
finding it on some Unix/Linux source code CD-ROM like 20 years ago,
thinking it sounded useful and cool, and trying to build it on
whatever
Linux I was using on my hand-me-down 486 back in 1999/2000. Even back
then,
it didn't build for me.
Mike
I have a memory of someone running it on an ELC (SunOS4.1.3 days.)
So: a fully patched SunOS 4.1 system with dev tools and 1991/1992
sources to Andrew ?
1348
days inactive
1349
days old
8 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
cmhanson＠eschatologist.net -
dstalk＠execulink.com -
healyzh＠avanthar.com -
lars＠nocrew.org -
mjkerpan＠kerpan.com -
stefan.skoglund＠agj.net