Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!wind!sdh
From: sdh@wind.bellcore.com (Stephen D Hawley)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: MGR (was Re: Suntools vs. Xwindows)
Message-ID: <17135@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 3 Jul 89 13:34:19 GMT
References: <3290@portia.Stanford.EDU> <18220@usc.edu>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: sdh@wind.UUCP (Stephen D Hawley)
Organization: Bellcore, Morristown, NJ
Lines: 19

Available from Bellcore (send mail to sau@bellcore.com) is a window manager
called mgr.  Mgr is small, solid, easy to use/learn, fast and works well
over networks.  All graphics I/O is done via escape codes, with primitives
for doing all manner of window manipulation, bit-blitting, etc.
Executables are tiny because they need only a very small set of primitives
to run locally (everything else comes from standard i/o).  Source code comes
with it, and versions are available that run on Suns and Dec 3100's.

Mgr's weaknesses are:
1) it is founded on a graphical base that is not strongly defined
2) Color is poorly supported
3) the speed of the i/o stream is a bottleneck, macking interactive
   programs slow.

All of the above CAN be programmed around, but it is a task that is not for
the faint of heart.

Steve Hawley
sdh@flash.bellcore.com