W Window System

The W Window System is a graphical windowing system and precursor in name and concept to the modern X Window 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 [http://interbgc.com/~noun/wws/ released] as W1R4 under the GNU Lesser General Public License for the libraries, and the GNU General Public License for the rest. [cite web
url=http://interbgc.com/~noun/wws/arch/w1r4.tgz
title=RELEASE.notes
quote=---- 1998 notes ------ This is an official W version 1, Release 4 based on my unofficialRelease 4 sources. Libraries are now under LGPL copyright and the restunder GPL copyright.] This work postdates both W and X by many years, and has no code in common with either.

ee also

* V (operating system)
* X Window System
* History of free software

External links

* [http://www.linuxhacker.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi/5/2126 Mailing list post on linuxhacker.org]
* [http://interbgc.com/~noun/wws/ Source code of W1R4]