W history
Torsten Scherer (TeSche) starts W in 1994 because X is too heavy under
MiNT... The goals were: W should be lightweight and easy to program
graphics window system, use client-server model and be able to run
WTerm, Wload, WClock and various OS independed games. Torsten achieved
these goals admirably, I'd say! :-)
New W 1 features (Dec -94)
- Use sockets instead of named pipes.
- Kay Römer (MiNT networking support / library author) joins
the development team.
New W 1 Release 2 features (Dec -95)
- SunOS and m68k Linux support.
- Bug fixes and lots of modifications to the W.
- Buffered socket communications. Speeds up things quite a lot.
- Stuff not totally inside a window is discarded for safety.
- New font scheme with support for proportional fonts.
- Faster background window updating (only 'dirty' area).
- Eero Tamminen joins the team.
- Lots of new fonts.
- New source layout.
New W 1 Release 3 features (Feb -96)
- Preliminary Amiga NetBSD support.
- Graphics contexts (TeSche).
- Convex polygons (Kay).
- Clipping for graphics functions (Kay).
- Faster patterned graphics functions (Eero).
- Basic widget toolkit library functionality on top of Wlib (Kay).
- Unlimited number of windows, sub windows (for the toolkit)
and window gadgets (TeSche & Kay).
- 'Proper' manual pages instead of the ASCII ones (TeSche).
New W1R4-beta features (non-released Nov -96)
- Preliminary x86 Linux support (Torsten).
- Get/putblock functions can now do most mono<->color conversions
either in W server or library (TeSche).
- Support for user settable colors (TeSche). Needs lots of changes all over the server.
- Experimental window resizing (TeSche).
- Ellipse and bezier functions (Eero).
- Graphics modes to the pattern functions (Eero).
- Experimental new text styles (bold, light, slanted) to 'packed' driver (Eero).
- Better support for the W toolkit in Wlib (TeSche).
- Basic widgets for the W Toolkit (Kay & Eero).
- HTML 1.0 conforming WWW-Browser and an enhanced W terminal (Kay).
There's also 'some' stuff still on the TODO
list...
For more complete description of the changes between different versions,
see the CHANGES file with the W sources.
Authors' W development systems:
Besides these there are of course machines at the university (and work?)
and at friends.
Torsten Scherer
- Atari TT (32MHz 68030).
- 19" monochrome monitor.
- OS: m68k-Linux.
Kay Römer
- Atari MegaSTe.
- ?
- OS: MiNT.
Eero Tamminen
- Atari ST (8MHz 68000) 4/32MB.
- 12" monochrome monitor.
- OS: MiNT.
Yes, I have intended for a couple of last years to change it...
Eero Tamminen, puujalka@modeemi.cs.tut.fi