Digital Technical Journal, Volume 2, Number 3: Decwindows Program
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
DECwindows Program Digital Technical Journal Digital Equipment Corporation X Toolkit lnt1in.dc .. XUb Volume 2 Number 3 Summer 1990 Editorial Jane C. Blake, Editor Barbara Lindmark, Associate Editor Richard W. Beane, Managing Editor Circulation Catherine M. Phillips, AdministratOr Suzanne ). Babineau, Secretary Production Helen L. Patterson, Production Editor Gaye Tatro, Typographer Peter Wo odbury,IllustratOr and Designer Advisory Board Samuel H. Fuller, Chairman Robert M. Glorioso John W. McCredie Mahendra R. Patel F. Gram Saviers Robert Spitz K. William D. Strecker VictOr A. Vyssotsky The Digital Technicaljournalis published quarterly by Digital Equipment Corporation, 146 Main Street MLOI-3/Il68, Maynard, Massachusens 01754-2571 . Subscriptions to the Journal are S40.00 for four issues and must be prepaid in U.S. funds. University and college professors and Ph.D. students in the electrical engineering and computer science fields receive complimentary subscriptions upon request. Orders, inquiries, and address changes should be sent to the Digital Technicaljournal at the published-by address. Inquiries can also be sent electronically [email protected]. 10 Single copies and back issues are available for S 16.00 each from Digital Press of Digital Equipment Corporation, 12 Crosby Drive, Bedford, MA 01730-1493. Digital employees may send subscription orders on the ENET to RDVAX,JOURNALor by interoffice mail tO mailstop MLOI-3/Il68. Orders should include badge number, cost center, site location code and address. engineers in Engineering and Manufacturing u.s. receive complimentary subscriptions; engineers in these organi zations in countries outside the should contact the Journal office u.s. to receive their complimentary subscriptions. All employees must advise of changes of address. Comments on the content of any paper are welcomed and may be sent to the editor at the published-by or network address. Copyright<tl 1990 Digital Equipment Corporation. Copying with out fee is permiued provided that such copies are made for use in educational institutions by faculty members and are not distributed for commercial advantage. Abstracting with credit of Digital Equip ment Corporation's authorship is permiued. All rights reserved. The information in this Journal is subject to change without notice and should not be construed as a commitment by Digital Equipment Corporation. Digital Equipment Corporation assumes no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this Journal. ISSN 0898-90I X Documentation Number EY-E756E-DP The following are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation, ALL-IN- 1, CDA, DEC net, DECstation 3100, DECwindows, DECwrite, Digital, the Digital logo, MicroVAX, ULTRIX, VAX, VAX 8000, VAX 8650, VAXC, VAX SCAN, VAXcluster, VAXset, VAXstation, VAXstation 100, VAXstation 2000, VAXstation 3100, VAXstation 3540/3520, VAXstation IIIGPX, VAXstation 8000, VMS, XU I. Apple HyperCard, and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple II, Computer, Inc. MS-DOS is a registered trademark and MS-Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Cover Design This issue features paperson DECwindows architecture and os/2 and Presentation Manager are trademarks ofInternational Business Machines Corporation. applications. Our cover design is a display of several windows called OSF/Motif is a trademark of Open Software Corporation. up on a VAXstation screen. The DECwindows applications used 3500 PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc. to create the display are DEC write, DECpaint, and DECimage. UNIX is a registered trademark of American Telephone & Telegraph Company. The cover was designed by David Combergof the CorporateDesign Window System is a trademark of the MassachuseusInstitute of Group with technical assistance from Victor of the Image X Bah/ Technology. Systems Advanced Development Group. Book production was done by Digital's Educational Services Media Communications Group in Bedford, MA. I Contents Foreword 7 Richard Treadway DEC windows Program 9 An Overview of the DECwindows Architecture Scott A. McGregor 16 The Sample Xll Server Architecture Susan Angebranndt and Todd D. Newman 24 Development of the XU/ Toolkit Leo P. Treggiari and Michael D. Collins 34 The DECwindows User Interface Language Stephen R. Greenwood 44 The Evolution of the X User Interface Style Thomas M. Spine and Jacob L. VanNoy 52 PEX: A Network-transparent Three-dimensional Graphics Sy stem Randi). Rost, jeffrey D. Friedberg, and Peter L. Nishimoto 64 XDPS: A Display PostScript Sys tem Extension for DECwindows Christopher A. Kent 7 4 The Development of DECwindows VM S Mail Michael R. Ryan and James H. VanGilder 84 Ethernet Performance of Remote DECwindows Applications Dinesh Mirchandani and Prabuddha Biswas I Editor's Introduction The style of user interaction with computers is then addressed by To m Spine and jake VanNoy. As they point out, the XUI style represents a change in approach for Digital to modern, graphic, direct manipulation user interfaces and to consistency across applications. XUI has evolved to provide a consistent means of user interaction for applica tions across the VMS, ULTRIX, and MS-OOS systems. Extensions to the X architecture are the topics of two papers. PEX, an extension of X to support the standard, is the subject of a paper by Randi PHIGS Rost, jeff Friedberg, and Peter Nishimoto. The C. Jane Blake authors describe some unique features of PEX and Editor present the major design decisions made in its development This issue of the Digital Te chnical journalfocuses Chris Kent is the author of a paper about XDPS. on Digital's DECwindows program, its architecture, another extension supported by DECwindows. and applications for the window environment. The XDPS was jointly developed by Digital and Adobe DECwindows program begins with the X Window Systems Inc. to integrate the X imaging model and Svstem, which was developed at ;VIIT with the sup - Display PostScript. As Chris explains, XDPS was port of Digital and IBM. Parers herein describe how designed to give application programmers the best Digital's engineers have built on X as well as con features of t he X and PostScript systems. tributed to related industry standards that help to Our last two papers address the topics of appli ensure comratibi lity across systems. cation development for the DECwindows environ Involved early in b01h the X Window and the ment and explain how the performance of such OECwindows projects, Scott McGregor describes applications can be measured. The implementation the DECwindows architecture as an upwardly com of DECwindows VMS mail is an example of an appli patible superset of X. In his overview paper for this cation development effort described here by Mike issue, Scott reviews aspects of the X design and the Ryan and jim VanGilder. Among the develop significant enhancements made by Digital in the ment issues discussed is the coordination needed development of its DECwindows program. between the VMS and ULTRlX mail applications The backbone of this program is the protocol XU developers to design a common interface for both for which Digital has developed a sample server mail applications. implementation. In their paper, Susan Angebranndt Dinesh Mirchandani and Prabuddha Biswas then and Todd Newman review the development of the present the results of a study made to determine X11 server, which is the basis for all Digital product whether distributed DECwindows applications servers. Now publicly available, the XII server is have an impact on the Ethernet network. The also a sample for all developers of X server product Juthors developed a simulation model running on implement:aions. a local area VAXcluster (LAVe) on the Ethernet to Several layers above the X11 server is the XUI predict the limiting system configuration in this toolkit. Leo Treggiari and Mike Collins discuss this scenario. set of run-time routines and application develop I thank john Hurd of the DECwindows pro menr tools, which is the primary programming gram and jesse Grodnik of the We stern Software interface to OECwindows applications. This toolkit Laboratory for their help in preparing this issue. was chosen as the base programming interface for the Oren Software roundation's Motif toolkit. The Xlll toolkit contains hundreds of attributes, actions, and widgets, which can contain thousands of lines of code. Steve Greenwood relates how the user interface language (UlL) was developed to manage the complexity of the toolkit. UIL pre serves the conceptual simplicity of the toolkit by allowing :1pplicttion developers to specify inter faces without writing the multitude of code lines normally required. 2 Biographies I Susan Angebranndt A consulting engineer for the Open Systems Group in Digital's Western Software Laboratory, Susan Angebranndt was the project leader for the sample server. Susan also worked on the team that designed Xll and implemented the Display PostScript extension for the DECwindows servers. She joined Digital in 1986 and is a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon X University (1980) with a B.S. in applied mathematics. Prabuddha Biswas Prabuddha Biswas joined Digital in 1985 after receiving a B.Te ch. fr om liT, Delhi, India , and an M.S. fr om the University of Massachusetts. Among the projects with which he has been involved are the performance analysis and modeling of software systems for the Business and Offi ce Systems Engineering (BOSE) Group and characterization of file system activity fr om com mercial J/0 traces. Prabuddha has applied for a patent and has authored papers for presentation to IEEE, ACM, and CMG conferences. He has received the BOSE Achievement Award for outstanding contribution. Michael D. Collins A member of the XUI toolkit team , Michael Collins con tributed to the design and implementation of the toolkit version 1 ancl version 3, and served as project leader for version 2. He is a principal software engineer in the Commercial Languages and Tools Group of the Software Development Technology organization. Mike is a member of ACM and AAAS and joined Digital in 1987. He received a Bachelor of Environmental Design (1981) fr om the University of Minnesota's School of Architecture.