X Window System Release 3 (Protocol Version 10) now available

[Brian Reid]

I've always thought that announcements about X should include some
explanation of what it is and where it came from--everybody seems to think
the whole idea came from MIT.

About 5 years ago the Distributed Systems group at Stanford started work on
an operating system called "V". V had a window package. My students and I
didn't like the V window package very much, so Paul Asente and I set out to
design a replacement window package for V. Paul did all of the programming
himself, and that gave him the right to name it. He called it "W". The
manual for the V system showed a rising sun on the cover (because at the
time V ran only on Suns); the manual for the W package showed a rising sun
framed by a windowshade. W was an alternative window system for the V
operating system.

W was a very hot property, and was tens of times faster than the V window
system, but it had one fatal flaw. It used V for interprocess communication.
In particular, it made the assumption that interprocess communication was
very fast. Under V that is a fair assumption; in most other places it is not.

Paul Asente took a summer job at DEC Western Research in 1983, and for his
summer job he ported W to run under 4.2BSD. The resulting port was very slow
because it used 4.2BSD interprocess communication. 

About 2 years ago Paul sent a tape of the 4.2BSD port of W to MIT for
Project Athena.  The folks at MIT put a lot of work into it, and in
particular they rewrote it so that it didn't use the BSD interprocess
communication facility.  Unfortunately, they also added 1 to the name,
turning W into X, and removed all traces of its origins from the comments in
the code. Although the MIT folks have certainly had a major impact on the
code of X, its design and internal structure remain quite similar to the
one that Paul Asente and I designed 4 years ago, and which Paul subsequently
programmed and sent to them. Paul and I would both appreciate it if the
people who distribute X would at least explain its history and origins,
rather than let the world believe that the whole thing was their creation
and their idea.

Brian Reid
Stanford