TABLE OF CONTENTS In 1988, a 10-year-old VMS operating system was migrated from a display list window manager, "VWS," to the X Windows-based "DECwindows" for all of its OpenVMS graphical workstations. Then, as X Windows continued to evolve, VMS added the Motif Window Manager and by 1997 even had the UNIX CDE (Common Desktop Environment). Linux evolved in the 1990s, building to these already established by standards: X Windows for interoperability, Motif for standard application-style management of X Windows processes and sessions, and CDE for a common look and feel in the UNIX and X Windows workstation community.
Today, we take these standards for granted in the workstation and Open Systems world, and multiplatform, multimedia Internet browsers may, in fact, be the final word on the merits of X Windows versus local Windows Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). If we look back, it might be worth noting why OpenVMS changed from a display-list-technology-based GUI to an X Windows-based GUI for its workstation displays.
During the 1980s, display-list window managers had enjoyed their flower. By the mid-1980s graphical heads were still standalone with display computers connected to a computer system that required graphical/Windows output. These two specialized computers communicated (usually) across serial or parallel cables, just as if the primary computational system were talking to a printer or plotter. Plotter is the key to understanding this relationship, because the same commands that drove plotter pens to draw lines and automatically fill areas on paper became the...
