[Info-vax] DECwindows predecessor?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-05-21 18:25:26 +0000, Jim Causey said:

> I've seen a couple of references to a UI framework that ran on VMS 
> prior to the development of DECwindows.   What was that framework 
> called?

VAX Workstation Software (VWS), and the VWS APIs were known as User 
Interface System (UIS).

> What was the last version of VMS on which it ran?

Probably OpenVMS VAX V7.3 as a guess, and probably some limited-release 
support-only version of VWS.  (V4.7? V4.9?)

VWS was tied to VAX, and tied to specific VAX graphics.

DECwindows is the OpenVMS implementation of X, and DECwindows first 
arrived with VAX/VMS V5.0-3.

There have been several different flavors of X around over the years 
too, including the CDE, Motif, and XUI interfaces.

X on VAX was hand-tuned and tailored, as VAX was slow.  OpenVMS Alpha 
was faster and OpenVMS I64 much faster, and both use much more direct 
ports of the X package.

There was a means to run at least some VWS apps on X known as UISX.

> Did it run on ULTRIX as well?

No, VWS did not run on ULTRIX; neither on UTRIX/VAX nor on ULTRIX/MIPS.

Some more info is available in other discussions in the archives of 
here in the comp.os.vms newsgroup, and there are still a few postings 
such as the following:
https://accelconf.web.cern.ch/accelconf/c92/papers/xi-11.pdf


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