calvinon Lobsters • Recommends
NeWS: A Networked and Extensible Window System, lecture by James Gosling (1990)
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NeWS: A Networked and Extensible Window System, lecture by James Gosling
Computer History Museum
180K subscribers • 29 videos on Hallway
- Recommended by 3 people: 2 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2017 to 2024.
- Presented by James Gosling, creator of Java and NeWS
Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.
4.5K views10 years ago3 recommendations
History and cultureSystems programmingHistory of computingOperating systems
James Gosling describes NeWS, a networked window system that uses PostScript as a programming language for communication between clients and the server.
NeWS: A Networked and Extensible Window System, lecture by James Gosling. The video was recorded in June 1990. From University Video Communications' catalog: "This lecture describes NeWS, a system in which client messages containing PostScript programs are passed across the network to be executed by the server. This use of a programming language as a basis of communication protocol allows for the extensive range of the windowing system. NeWS also has a high-level imaging model that enables device-independent advanced rendering. Comparisons to similar systems are discussed." Lot number: X6636.2013 Catalog number: 102624680Why it's here
3 people recommend thisWhat people say. Engineers point to this lecture as a historical look at Sun's PostScript-based alternative to the X Window System.
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Open look was originally from Sun NeWS, an alternative to X built with AT&T. Example: link It was an interface that could degrade extremely well to monochrome and still look reasonable on the lousy LCDs of the 1980s. The hit points are large and spaced out enough so that it could be operated via the janky touch screens of the era as well Also NeWS used postscript as the display language. It extended it to allow the interactive elements. SGI also had a system based on NeWS called 4Sight: link Here's James Gosling (you know, guy that invented Java) talking about it for an hour or so from 1990 link to this video
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…k] "Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk" link "SYMBOLICS CONCORDIA ONLINE DOCUMENTATION HYPER TEXT MARKUP 1985" link You can see how NeXT builds on many of these concepts on the famous "NeXT vs Sun" marketing piece, link Sun also had some ideas along these lines with NeWS, "NeWS: A Networked and Extensible Window System," link to this video Naturally OS/2, BeOS, Windows, macOS, iOS, and even Android share some of the ideas. Now, before I proceed note that actually modern Linux distributions have all the tooling to make these concepts happen, but it fails short to have everyone agree on a proper stack. So basically, the main idea is to have a proper full stack in place for deve…