dtj v02-03 1990

This issue of the Digital Technical Journal, published in Summer 1990, focuses on Digital Equipment Corporation's DECwindows program.

The document highlights DECwindows as Digital's strategic windowing system, built upon and extending the industry-standard X Window System (X11) developed at MIT. Key themes include:

1. Architecture and Enhancements: DECwindows is presented as an upwardly compatible superset of X, offering improved performance, reliability, and extensibility. Digital contributed significant enhancements, including a sample X11 server implementation that became the basis for all Digital product servers.
2. Consistent User Interface: A major goal was to provide a common graphical user interface across VMS, ULTRIX, and MS-DOS operating systems. This is achieved through the XUI Toolkit (later adopted as the base for OSF/Motif), the DECwindows User Interface Language (UIL) for separating interface definition from application code, and the XUI Style Guide for promoting consistency.
3. Advanced Graphics Capabilities: DECwindows extends the X architecture with support for:
   • PEX (PHIGS Extension to X): A network-transparent 3D graphics system supporting the PHIGS standard.
   • XDPS (Display PostScript System Extension for DECwindows): Integrates Adobe's PostScript imaging model for advanced graphics output.
4. Application Development and Performance: The journal covers tools and methodologies for building DECwindows applications, illustrated by the development of DECwindows VMS Mail. It also includes a study on the Ethernet performance of remote DECwindows applications to assess their impact on network traffic in distributed environments.

In essence, the journal showcases Digital's commitment to open systems standards, distributed computing, and providing a powerful, consistent, and extensible windowing environment for its diverse platforms.