Sun Technical Reference Library

Transcription

1 Sun Technical Reference Library

2 James Gosling David S.H. Rosenthal Michelle J. Arden The NeWS Book An Introduction to the Network/extensible Window System Springer-Verlag New York Berlin Heidelberg London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong

3 James Gosling David S.H. Rosenthal Michelle J. Arden Sun Microsystems, Inc. Mountain View, CA 94043, USA Graphics Designer and Editor: David A. LaVallee Sun Workstation, SunWindows, SunView, Sun-I, Sun-2, NeWS, NDE, XlI/NeWs, Network File System, Open Fonts, F3, Typemaker, TypeScaler, and the Sun logo are registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Incorporated. PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Incorporated. X Window System is a registered trademark of Massachussetts Institute of Technology. UNIX and OPEN LOOK are registered Trademarks of AT&T. Quickdraw, Macintosh, Switcher, Finder, and MacApp are trademarks of Apple Computer. Mathematica is a trademark of Wolfram Research, Inc. OS/2, Presentation Manager, MS/DOS, LAN Manager, and MSWindows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Atari is a trademark of Atari Corporation. Amiga is a trademark of Commodore. Andrew is a trademark of Carnegie Mellon University. VAX, PDP-IO, MicroVax, and VMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. Smalltalk, Alto, Dorado, DLisp, Star, Viewers, Interlisp-D, Ethernet, Mesa, Cedar, Pilot, Tajo, and Docs are trademarks of Xerox Corporation. Interpress is a trademark of Imagen. PClRT us a trademark of ffim. GEM is a trademark of Digital Research, Inc. EXPRES is a trademark of NSF. Multics is a trademark of Honeywell. Parallax 1280 and Viper are trademarks of Parallax Graphics, Inc. Silicon Graphics, IRIS 4D, 4sight, and the SOl logo are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc. NeWS/2 is a trademark of Architech Corporation. Times-Roman, Courier, New Century Schoolbook, Snell Roundhand, and Helvetica are trademarks of Linotype. The NeWS Cookbook is a trademark of Pica Pty. Ltd. All other products listed in this book are trademarks of their companies. Sun Microsystems, Inc., has reviewed the contents of this book prior to final publication. The book does not necessarily represent the views, opinions, or product strategies of the Company or its subsidaries. Sun is not responsible for its contents or its accuracy, and therefore makes no representations or warranties with respect to it. Sun believes, however, that it presents accurate and valuable information to the interested reader, as of the time of publication. Sun trademarks and product names referred to herein are proprietary to Sun. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gosling, James The NeWS book: an introduction to the Networked Extensible Window System 1 James Gosling, David S.H. Rosenthal, Michelle J. Arden. p. cm.-(the Sun technical reference library) Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN-13: e-isbn-13: DOl: / Windows (Computer programs) 2. NeWS (Computer program) I. Rosenthal, David S.H. II. Arden, Michelle J. III. Title. IV. Series. QA76.76.W56A '3--<ic Sun Microsystems, Inc. Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover I st edition 1989 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone. Camera-ready copy prepared by the authors I Printed on acid free paper.

4 Preface This book is an introduction to NeWS: the Networked, Extensible, Window System from Sun Microsystems. It is oriented towards people who have a basic knowledge of programming and window systems who would like to understand more about window systems in general and NeWS in particular. A significant portion of the book is devoted to an overview and history of window systems. While there is enough detail here to allow readers to write simple NeWS applications, the NeWS Reference Manual [SUN87a] should be consulted for a more complete treatment. This book was written to refer to the NeWS 1.1 product, available from Sun and also available from several non-sun suppliers. Shortly after this book is published, Sun will be releasing the next version of NeWS - the Xll/NeWS merged window system. Chapter 10 is dedicated to an overview of that product, but Xll/NeWS deserves a book of its own. All the code examples in this book have been tested on both NeWS and the Xll/NeWS merge. Should there be another edition of this book, we will discuss some of the new development being done in the user interface toolkit area on NeWS. Significantly, the NeWS Development Environment (NDE) is now being developed at Sun; NDE promises to eclipse existing user interface toolkit designs and window programming environments. Before giving input on the many contributors to NeWS, the authors wish to give special thanks to John Warnock and Chuck Geschke of Adobe Systems. Without their design and implementation of the PostScript language, NeWS would not have been possible. The PostScript language is the future of printers and screens everywhere, and Adobe deserves the credit for teaching computer users the value of quality imaging in the everyday world. Many people deserve the credit for this book, and for making NeWS a product. In the Sun window systems and user interface groups, the list of contributors is long. Credit is due to Tony Hoeber for the excellent NeWS

5 vi Technical Overview[sUN87b], to which this book owes much. Robin Schaufler's Xll/NeWS paper[scha88], is the basis for all of Chapter 10. Craig Taylor built the first version of the NeWS interpreter with James; Jerry Farrell designed and implemented NeWS input handling; Owen Densmore single-handedly invented object-oriented, interactive programming in the PostScript language. Steve Evans and his windows platform team are the developers who have made NeWS and Xll/NeWS a reality. We also acknowledge the Portable Windows Group, led by Steve Isaac, Amy Christen, and Steve Drach, as key contributors to the NeWS program and success. Warren Teitelman, Eric Schmidt, and Jim Davis provided critical management support and encouragement. Our particular thanks go to our external contributors for Chapter 9. Martin Levy and Marty Picco from Parallax are the authors of the Parallax section. Mark Callow authored the Silicon Graphics contribution, and returned excellent feedback as a reviewer of several drafts. Mark and Silicon Graphics, as our first portable NeWS customer, returned extremely valuable feedback, which has improved the quality and design of today's product. Maurice Balick was responsible for the section on the NeWS OS/2 port done by Architech. Colleagues from SGI who contributed to Mark's paper were Peter Broadwell, Kipp Hickmann, Allen Leinwand, Rob Myers, Michael Toy and Glen Williams. Maurice was ably aided by Anthony Flynn, Marie B. Raimbault, Eddie Currie, and Sun's Portable NeWS group. Our patient reviewers deserve high acclaim for wading through pages of code and syntax. S. Page deserves limitless credit for his tireless and incomparable editing skills, as well as his knowledge of NeWS. Henry McGilton gave us the benefit of his experience in writing and editing by his detailed notes and commentary. Brian Raymor, Martha Zimet, Steve Evans, Don Hopkins, Raphael Bracho, Sue Abu-Hakim, John Gilmore, Francesca Freedman and Tim Niblett all spent time and energy giving us comments and support. Finally, we are grateful to Mark Hall and Gerhard Rossbach for making the book happen. NeWS has been, and continues to be, a lot of fun. The interest and enthusiasm of the many NeWS supporters and developers has made it all worthwhile: our last thanks to you.

6 Table of Contents Preface... v 1 Introduction NeWS Overview Window System Architecture: History, Terms and Concepts Introduction to the PostScript Language NeWS Facilities for an Interactive World Object-Oriented PostScript NeWS Applications and the Network A Tour Through a NeWS Application Porting NeWS to Other Platforms XII/NeWS Design Overview I Description of the Plates Bibliography Index

7 Sun Technical Reference Library