[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

The V sources on bitsavers has a w command. But don't get excited! It seems to be similar to unix's w, a variation on the who command. I wonder if this mythical w is the same as V's VGTS as it seems to have pretty much the same model. From https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/357332.357334 The ideal interface must take into account four fundamental principles: (1) The interface to application programs should be independent of particular physical devices or intervening networks. (2) The user should be allowed to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. (3) The command interaction discipline should be consistent and natural. (4) Response to user interaction should be fast. The first principle has led to work in virtual terminals (VTs) and deviceindependent graphics packages, the second to work in window systems, and the third to work in what has recently been called user interface management systems, the most common examples of which are command languages. Without adhering to the fourth principle, however, much of the other work is moot. In a distributed environment, in particular, the supporting network protocols cannot incur inordinate overhead. From concluding remarks: To summarize the major attributes of the VGTS: - Instead of describing how to draw a picture, the application describes what is to be drawn. The user then specifies where the picture should be displayed. - Objects have a hierarchical structure. Hence, the VGTS supports structured display files rather than segmented display files. - The VGTS is portable to a range of relatively high-performance devices. - Applications can be distributed over multiple machines. - A single user can access several different applications simultaneously. - It performs well! VGTS code is in the V system sources at bitsavers.