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                                                        Andrew Consortium
                                               School of Computer Science
                                                          Carnegie Mellon


            The Andrew View

                                                  Volume 1, Numbers 3 & 4
                                                            January, 1993



This double issue of The Andrew View announces and accompanies two major
efforts

        1)  Release 5.2.0 of the Andrew User Interface System, and
        2) a report of the feasibility of converting AUIS source to C++.

We also report on current projects and proposed new projects, and ask
you to tell us about your site in response to a survey.


_____________________________________________
Release Plans and Version Numbers
Wilfred J. Hansen, Director

The current members-only release of the Andrew User Interface System,
5.2.0, has been sent to members, as detailed in the next article.  If
your organization is a member and you have not received this release,
please let us know ([e-mail]).  If your
organization is not a member and you would like this release, this may
be a good time to consider joining the Andrew Consortium (same address).

The release of 5.2.0 is a good time to review our future release plans,
since they have some innovations.  For the first time we will have more
than one release in-the-works simultaneously.

In December, 1993, the X Consortium will release the R6 version of X.
As part of the X distribution, we release version Andrew version 6.0.x
(for a small value of x).  Release 6.0.x will be the same as 5.2.x;
that is, it will be version 5.2.0 with a few patches to correct core
dumps and other egregious errors.  At that time, the permissions
statement on the sources will be changed to the normal X permissions,
allowing general exploitation of the code.

Throughout the year, we will continue to enhance Andrew and release
improvements to members.  Patch releases correcting errors in 5.2.0 will
be called 5.2.1, 5.2.2, and so on.  However, releases to members with
major enhancements will be labelled 6.1.0 and higher.  These
enhancements will not be included in the 6.0.x released to the X
distribution.

(A future major release might resonably be called 7.0.0.  However, some
years ago there was a release 7 of Andrew.  If anyone is still using it,
please let us know and we may skip 7 this time around.)

(Here at the Consortium, we augment our version number with information
as to the platform and date of compilation.  This is done manually, by
editing the file $ANDREWDIR/lib/atkvers.num;  the value can be any
string up to forty characters or so.)

In addition, we are also creating a small patch to 5.1.0, the CDrom
version.  This will fix known problems with that release and will
augment the sources so they will build on the AIX 3.2 operating system
for IBM/RS-6000's.


_____________________________________________
Andrew User Interface System: Release 5.2.0

About the turn of the year, release 5.2.0 of AUIS was shipped to members
of the Andrew Consortium.  This release includes many new features
introduced during the year just past.  The full set of changes is
described in a document entitled "Andrew User Interface System: New and
Revised Features in Version 5.2.0."  Here are the highlights.

--- New applications and insets ---

Launchapp - Displays a menu of AUIS applications and serves as an
alternative to the shell for initiating applications.  Give the command
`launchapp`;  there is no help file;  just click on the buttons.   (Here
at the School of Computer Science, the commands `atk` and `auis` also
run launchapp.  Sites can choose their own aliases.)

Prefed - An editor for the preferences file.  It displays existing
preferences and offers graphical options to change them;  help is
available on each preference.  For help on the entire application, give
the command `help prefed`.

Figure - Drawing editor;  faster and more reliable than zip, though it
lacks zip's capability for multiple levels of detail.  `help figure`

Image - Supplements the existing raster inset by providing for multibit
pixels  and thus color and greyscale images.  Unlike raster, however,
editing operations are not supported.  A variety of image storage
formats are supported such as jpeg, and gif.  `help image`

--- New general facilities ---

Menus now display the equivalent keystroke combinations.

File name canonicalization - In most instances, prompts for a file name
will accept the following:
                $XXX where XXX is an environment variable,
                ~user/ or ~user@afs-cell/ at the beginning of the file name,
                /../ at the beginning of a filename to refer to superroot.

Keyboard-macro-to-ness-macro conversion - With this facility users can
define new key stroke and menu operations dynamically.  Macros are
created with the usual keyboard macro { ^X-( ... ^X-) } and then
converted to Ness, after which they can be edited as Ness code.  `help
macros`

The ATK copyright notice and disclaimer are now displayed in various key
files such as the toplevel Imakefile and the README.  It is displayed on
starting up programs that use frame.

--- New documentation ---

An introduction to the Andrew User Environment for new users is
installed into $ANDREWDIR/doc/intro.doc.

The answers to frequently asked questions have been amassed into an
FAQ.ez file which resides at the top level of the source tree.

Class hierarchy browsing - A graphical representation of the class
hierarchy can be created and viewed.  The system installation process
installs a tree of the standard Andrew classes into
$ANDREWDIR/doc/atk/classes.org.  You can create trees for other class
hierarchies: `help mkbrowse`

The papers from the 1992 Andrew Consortium Technical Conference are in
the source in directory ./doc/papers/atk/conference/


--- New preferences ---

For definitions and setting these preferences, see the `prefed`
application described above.

XStyleSelections and StrictXStyleSelections - In some X
    applications, the act of selecting text automatically makes it the
    source for any subsequent paste operation.  (You can't do "replace"
    operations!)  These two preferences cause ATK applications to behave
    just like X applications.

DynamicMessageLineSize, ResizableMessageLine, MinimumMessageLines
    The message line can grow and shrink either dynamically or in
    response to user action.  (I recommend setting
    DynamicMessageLineSize to Yes;  it is disabled because others here
    disliked it in one annoying case that has since been fixed. -wjh)

HighlightToBorders - The highlight of the text selection has been
    changed so the newline is part of the preceding line rather than the
    following.  Now, when the first word on a line is selected, the
    highlight includes only that word.  The old behavior can be
    recovered by setting this preference to TRUE.

--- Improvements to existing applications and insets ---

Click boxes in help - All .help files have been converted to use the new
'Help Topic' font for references.  They will appear surrounded with
dotted boxes and can be simply clicked on to traverse to the referenced
text.

Raster editing - When editing a raster you can now select the "Toolset"
menu item;  a separate window will appear with a menu of raster
operations.  In addition, there is an option in the main raster menu to
overlay an arbitrary inset, such as text, on top of a raster.  After
editing the overlay to a desired image, its bits can be "frozen" to
become part of the raster image.  Thereafter, they can be edited just
like any other part of the raster.

Srctext - Andrew has always had a diverse collection of tools for
editing files particular formats: ctext for C code, mtext for Modula
code, and so on.  These have now been superseded with a more generalized
mechanism provided by IBM Rochester.  The superclass "srctext" provides
general source text editing mechanisms which are supplemented by
subclasses to provide editors for even more source languages than
before.  General help is available via `help srctext`.  Languages
supported include: assembly language, C++, C, Modula-3, Modula-2, and
raw ATK data stream.

Bdffont - Numerous bug fixes and cleaning up.  The font editor now works
on all bdf format fonts we have been able to find.

MIME format - MIME support has been augmented. There is now better
support for message bodies of type multipart/digest.  And message bodies
may contain items of type image/gif, image/pbm, image/ppm, image/pgm,
and image/jpeg.  There was a bug in the delivery system that kept MIME
messages from netnews; this has been fixed.  MIME documentation has been
added to `help messages`

Ness - Version 1.7 has the functions ReadRawFile, WriteRawFile,
QueueAnswer, QueueCancellation, WriteObject, and a collection of
functions which emulate REXX functions.

Parsing - A new set of tools has been introduced for token analysis and
parsing.  They are in the source tree as the atk/syntax subtree.
Facilities include a version of the bison parser (fromthe Free Software
Foundation), a parse object which uses tables generated by bison, a
symbol table, a lexeme scanner and an associated lexeme description
processor.  These new tools are objects in the Andrew sense so it is
easy to incorporate multiple instances in a single application.
Moreover, many lexemes are understood from the bison grammar and need
not be described redundantly to the lexeme processor.

Posixification - Many files were "Posixified", mostly by Todd Inglett.
This meant converting to use posix defined libraries; in particular,
strchr() and strrchr() are now used instead of index() and rindex().
The other things done relate to signal handling, particularly the return
type, and to return values from wait.  Also some prototypes were added
under ifdef POSIX (related to signal handler functions), some, if not
all of these have been expanded to test POSIX and __STDC__ separately,
since under AIX we compile with POSIX compliance, but old style C.  In
this process various additional corrections from IBM Rochester were
incorporated into the sources.


_________________________________
Conversion to C++

One decision of the 1992 Annual Meeting was to study the question of
converting the AUIS source code from C to C++.  This study has been
completed and is reported in an accompanying paper entitled "Prospects
for Conversion to C++ of the Andrew User Interface System."  The summary
of the paper says:

    The Andrew User interface System is written in the C language
    with a few conventions which create an object-oriented
    programming environment.  The industry has begun to adopt C++ as
    the object-oriented programming model, so the question addressed
    in this paper is whether to convert AUIS to C++.

    The non-technical aspects of the conversion include the cost of
    conversion--almost four programmer-years for the Consortium
    staff and more for member staffs--and the opportunity cost of
    not pursuing other enhancements to AUIS.  After conversion to
    C++, there is some potential for greater acceptance of AUIS as a
    toolkit for X since existing toolkits are closely bound to C,
    however, the Fresco effort may be maturing at about the time the
    conversion would be done.

    The most important technical issue is dynamic loading.  When the
    40 mega-bytes of Andrew source code are statically linked in one
    object, the link time and memory occupancy are exorbitant.  The
    only solutions are machine dependent, whether we remain in C or
    convert to C++.  Even if dynamic loading is solved, it may not
    be feasible to convert AUIS, but experiments have indicated it
    can be done.  One outcome from conversion is the availability of
    C++ features such as multiple inheritance and in-line functions.

    Over the next months, Consortium members will have to determine
    whether the potential benefits justify the conversion effort.


_____________________________________________
Andrew Technical Conference

Proceedings are available for the 1992 conference.  Send email to
[e-mail] for ordering information.


The 1993 Andrew Technical Conference and Consortium Annual Meeting will
be held on the last Thursday and Friday in June.  A tutorial will be on
Thrusday the 24th and the conference proper on the 25th with the annual
meeting at the dinner on the evening between the two days.

Your participation in the conference is welcome.  Papers are appropriate
on any aspect of Andrew:

        applications
        experience with users
        new objects
        proposals for revision of internal protocols

We expect to have an RS/6000 with video projector available if you would
like to do a demonstration.

_______________________________________________
Survey

To learn more about our users we are distributing the following survey.
Please take a few moments to complete it and return it to
[e-mail].  We will share the results of the survey in a
later edition of The Andrew View.

(It is not our intention to publish individual answers other than to
quote comments;  however, we are not taking cryptographic precautions
and cannot guarantee the confidentiality of what you send us.  If we've
asked questions you'd rather not answer, please feel free to omit them
from your reply.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1993 Survey of Users of the Andrew User Interface System
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Name:
Net address:
Company/division:
Address:
Phone:
Number of machines at site running AUIS:
                1?   2-10?   10-100?   100-1000?    over 1000?
Number of AUIS users at site:
                1?   2-10?   10-100?   100-1000?    over 1000?
Number of AUIS programmers at site:
                1?   2-10?   10-100?   100-1000?    over 1000?
Does your site have AFS:
What system type(s) do you run AUIS on:
What are you using AUIS for:
        Mail
        Document production
        Project development
        Other uses
Which AUIS applications/insets do you most commonly use?
Why are you using AUIS?  Did your site consider alternatives?
Other comments:

Please answer the following if you are doing development work using AUIS.
What subject areas are you working on?
What applications/insets have you developed?
Are you interested in sharing code and/or information with other AUIS sites?


______________________________________________
MetaMail 2.4

MetaMail is used in AMS, the Andrew Message System, for handling some
parts of reading MIME format messages.  A version has been incorporated
in the Andrew CDrom, but a newer version--MetaMail 2.4--is now available
for anonymous ftp from thumper.bellcore.com in directory pub/nsb.  For
more information contact Nathaniel Borenstein
       Bellcore Room 2D-296
       Morristown, NJ 07962-1910
       [phone]
       <[e-mail]>

What follows is an extract from the README announcing MetaMail 2.4:

    On behalf of Bellcore, I am happy to announce the availability
    of version 2.4 of the "metamail" software to the email
    community.  This package, which is available free of charge for
    unlimited use by anyone for any purpose, is offered in the hope
    of making multimedia mail (using the MIME standard) more
    widespread. ...

    Metamail is a package that can be used to convert virtually ANY
    mail-reading program [in our case, the Andrew Message System]
    into a multimedia mail-reading program.  It is an extremely
    generic implementation of MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
    Extensions), the proposed standard for multimedia mail formats
    on the Internet. ...

    [At heart, the package] allows the easy configuration of mail
    readers to call external "viewers" for different types of mail.
    The distribution includes viewers for a number of mail types
    defined by the MIME standard, so that it is useful immediately
    and without any special site-specific customization or
    extension.  Types with built-in support in the metamail
    distribution include:

        1.  Plain US ASCII (i.e., English) text, of course.
        2.  Plain text in the ISO-8859-8 (Hebrew/English) character set.
        3.  Richtext (multifont formatted text, termcap-oriented viewer)
        4.  Image formats (using the xloadimage program under X11)
        5.  Audio (initial "viewer" for SPARCstations)
        6.  Multipart mail, combining several other types
        7.  Multipart/alternative mail, offering data in multiple formats.
        8.  Encapsulated messages
        9.  Partial & external messages (for large data objects)
        10.  Arbitrary (untyped) binary data

______________________________________________
Projects in Progress

The Consortium staff are currently working on these projects:

- Documentation  Request name completion has been added to help.  An
introduction suitable for publication is being prepared so users can be
given a document in addition to being told to use the help application.
(A number of other documentation enhancements are incorporated in 5.2.0.)

- Static loading  Mechanisms are just about completed for buiilding ATK
applications as standalone programs.  To build a standalone application,
you specify a set of desired objects and then run a utility which
determines the complete set of objects needed and creates the commands
to build the system.

- Pattern specification in Ness  Ness is a string processing language
but has so far had only rudimentary patterns.  An experimental pattern
specification scheme has been designed and will be implemented over the
course of the year.

- Patches to the CDrom  A few patches have been found that will increase
the utility of the CDrom release.  These will be available as a floppy
disk accompanying the CDrom and will include adaptation to AIX-3.2 on
the IBM RS/6000.

In addition to the work above, one of our members has submitted a sketch
of some projects they would like us to undertake.  If others have
comments, we will be happy to hear them, and will accommodate them as
best we can.  Comments can include suggestions for different priorities,
different projects, and possible implementations.  It is unlikely that
we will complete all of these projects in 1993  (especially if we decide
to convert to C++.)

0.  Two important bugs to fix.  (A)      Backwards scrolling should work
smoothly even if the text has large insets.   (B) Color shading should
be more predictable.  Only the background color of a view should dictate
the shadow colors.  The current scheme of ``blending'' the foreground
and background colors is not intuitive.

1.  Text should allow multiple simultaneous templates and recursive
templates.  Multiple templates are needed for packages like compchar
which add a template to the document; the current strategy of copying
one of the templates into the datastream is not desirable.  Recursive
templates are needed by our users who frequently customize templates.
It will allow them to override styles while still including the system
installed template.

2.  Motif style ``widget'' classes.    A comprehensive set of widgets is
needed to support application construction.  Widgets must support
interfaces for inclusion in text or applications, printing, setting
attributes, and attaching user actions to widgets.  Most widgets should
support label fields for text or icon labels of the object.  To prove
the merits of the widget classes and to improve system consistency and
appearance, the new widget set should be used for the control panels of
raster, figure, lookz, and other applications.

Especially important widgets are:

    textfield -  a single line of editable text.  A feature would
    tie an optionmenu to the textfield to provide a list of possible
    ``canned'' values.

    pushbutton - A simple 3D pushbutton.  The button should support
    a text label or an icon image (X bitmap or Xpm pixmap).

    checkbutton - A simple box that may be ``checked.''  It may be
    best if checkbutton (like the existing sbutton) supports rows
    and columns of buttons to allow them to line up neatly.

    radiobutton - A radiobutton is like a checkbutton except it
    works in a group and only one radiobutton in the group may be
    pressed at a time.

    optionmenu - An optionmenu is a small button that when pressed
    posts a simple popup menu.  The user may choose an item from
    that menu which now becomes the new selection in the button.  A
    nice additional feature would provide a way for the user to
    ``rotate'' through the list of options rather than raise a menu
    (both are useful--click vs. press and hold?).

    grouping -  Some way to group ``widgets'' into a user interface.
     The existing figure, text, and table insets should be made
    suitable as grouping widgets and mechanisms should be provided
    to facilitate the creation of other such widgets.

3.  Rectangular cut & paste for text.  (This feature may be less useful
when not working with a constant width font family.)  Here is one way to
view the problem:
    Text could support multiple selected regions.  Sweeping text in
    ``rectangle mode,'' for example using shift-button1, would be a
    short hand way to select many small regions of text (partial
    lines).  A copy will put these regions concatenated with
    newlines together into the cut buffer.  The lines can be pasted
    in one of two ways.  A normal paste will work as it does today.
    A "rectangular paste"  will insert each line from the cut buffer
    at the same character position as the starting point in
    consecutive lines of text.
Other approaches are possible; the entire idea requires considerable
design work.

4.  Paragraph numbers for text.  In this mode, a separate fixed width
column at the left of a textview will show a paragraph number at the
start of each paragraph.  This display can be toggled on and off with a
command procedure.  Clicking on the numbers could possibly have some
affect, such as automatically selecting the paragraph's text.
Additionally, perhaps, an inset may be allowed to post icon characters
in the paragraph number view.  For example, a debugger might toggle the
paragraph numbers on and post an arrow icon on a specific line.

5.  Architect a new printing model for ATK.  It must support both
postscript, plaintext and MIME.  Inset implementations should be
independent of postscript (as they are today independent from X).

6.  Develop a new previewer.  Base it on ghostscript and/or Adobe's
Display Postscript.  Discard the old preview program.

7.  Image toolset.  Similar to raster's new toolset for
painting/editing.  Discard raster.

8.  Event-based keyboard model.  The keyboard model should change from
the old ASCII terminal model into one where all keys/modifiers are
available.  The keyboard and mouse hit mechanisms might be somehow
merged in the toolkit.  Views should also be allowed to see other events
such as ``enter'' and ``leave.''

9.  Graphics should support a Graphics Context model.  A view would be
able to switch among multiple contexts instead of setting all context
values for each operation.  For compatability, we must provide a default
graphics context and reimplement the current methods as macromethods
using this default context.  Provide new general methods taking a GC as
an argument.

10.  Text should gracefully handle insets which do not exist.  Perhaps
it can generate a note inset containing the datastream for an unknown
inset?

11.  Generalize textview_BalanceCmd.   Have it quit checking C syntax
(comments, apostrophes, etc).  Make it a method so ctext can override it.

12.  Eliminate "Update Document" from lookz.  Our machines are fast
enough for the updating to be dynamic.  A preference may be used for
slow machines if you think it is necessary.

13.  Make the begin/end flags on environments be settable attributes on
a per style basis.  This will allow srctext to better control specific
styles (comments, etc).

14.  Implement an "include" mechanism for preferences.  Perhaps we could
support something like this:

        *.preferences:  file1, file2, file3

Where the preferences in the main preferences file would be used first,
then this preference will be queried for additional files which will be
read in order, followed by global.prf.

15.  Undo.  Begin by introducing an undo method in the data object
class, then have each data object override this method.  Simpletext and
text are the obvious first candidates for an undo function.  An undo
command procedure would ask the dataobject to undo the last function.
The dataobject may save a history of ``undo information'' up until the
last time it was written.  Alternatively, some dataobjects may only
support one level of undo (some kind of feedback would be useful to warn
the user of this inconsistency).  A dataobject would not be expected to
undo operations to an embedded inset.  It may be expected to delete an
inset that was inserted, however.  Can you undo an undo operation?  We
should probably look at some example implementations to see what has
been tried.


______________________________________________
New Staff

Mary Anne Cowden has joined the staff as secretary and general assistant
after previously working for the Center for Machine Translation here at
Carnegie Mellon.  When not working, she indulges in the creative arts,
including drawing, fabric constructions, gastronomic concoctions, and
astrology.  She has two sons in middle school, one of whom is currently
specializing in investment in potential-antique illustrated-story
magazines.



_______________________________________
The Masthead
_______________________________________
The Andrew User Interface System

The Andrew User Interface System (AUIS) is a portable user-interface
environment and toolkit that runs under X11. It provides a
dynamically-loadable object-oriented environment wherein objects can be
embedded in one-another. Thus, one could use our 'generic-object' editor
(ez) to edit text that, in addition to containing multiple fonts,
contains embedded raster images, spreadsheets, drawings, equations,
simple animations, etc.  These embedded objects could themselves contain
other objects, including text. With the toolkit, programmers can create
new objects that can be embedded as easily as those that come with the
system. Many objects, including those mentioned above, along with a help
system, a system monitoring tool (console), an editor based shell
interface (typescript), and support for printing multi-media documents,
are included in the release, making it useful to programmers and
non-programmers alike.

The Andrew Message System(AMS) is a component of AUIS and provides a
multi-media interface to mail and bulletin-boards.  AMS contains many
advanced  features including authentication, return receipts, automatic
sorting of mail, vote collection and tabulation, enclosures, audit
trails of related messages, and subscription management. It also
provides a variety of interfaces that support character-based terminals
and low-function personal computers in addition to high-function
workstations.

______________________________________
Consortium Services and Offerings

For information about services and offerings of the Andrew Toolkit
Consortium please contact us at:
    Information Requests
    ATK Consortium
    Carnegie Mellon University
    Smith Hall 106
    5000 Forbes Avenue
    Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
    USA
    phone: [phone]
    [e-mail]

We offer:
        Memberships at three levels: Full, Distributing, and Associate
        Source tape
        CDrom with both source and executables
        Bibliography
        Copies of papers
        Videotapes
        Conference proceedings

Sources and binaries are available online via anonymous ftp from
        emsworth.andrew.cmu.edu (128.2.45.40)
where the full CDrom release is in the ./cdrom directory.  See the
README there.  Another ftp site is
        export.lcs.mit.edu (18.30.0.238)
in directory ./contrib/andrew;  this is cloned on many servers,
world-wide.  On the nationwide AFS file system, AUIS is available in
        /afs/andrew.cmu.edu/itc/sm/releases/X.V11R5/ftp/cdrom/

Remote Andrew Demo service:
        finger [e-mail]

News groups:
        [e-mail]
This is a distribution list offering the news with full AUIS formatting;
send subscription requests to [e-mail].  For
newsgroup in plain ASCII, see
        comp.soft-sys.andrew

______________________________________
Platforms

Andrew has been successfully used on (at least) these platforms:
    IBM:  RT AOS 3.4, RT AIX 2.2.1, RS/6000 AIX3.1, PS/2 AIX1.2
    SUN:  Sun3 3.5, Sun3 4.0, Sun4 4.0, Sun3 4.1, Sun4 4.1, Sun4 Mach
    DEC:  Vax Ultrix 3.1, Vax Ultrix 4.2, Vax BSD, DEC MIPS, Pmax Mach
    other:  HP, SCO I386, SGI IRIX 4.0, Apollo, Macintosh II
        MacMach, 486 Mach

Send bug reports to:
        [e-mail]