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From: nsb+@andrew.cmu.edu (Nathaniel Borenstein)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,news.groups
Subject: comp.sys.andrew: NEW call for votes
Message-ID: <4Y4dPXy00Uk4Qp6GQ9@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 6 Mar 89 14:34:11 GMT
Organization: Information Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 62

This is a NEW call for votes on the creation of a newsgroup for discussing the
Andrew system.  If you voted on the previous vote, you should vote AGAIN for
this new vote.  Remember, if we don't get enough "yes" votes, we don't get a
newsgroup.

There was a lot of debate (on news.groups) about what the newsgroup should be
called.  The four main contenders were "comp.andrew", "comp.sys.andrew",
"comp.env.andrew", and "comp.software.andrew".  (The latter two both involve
creating a new intermediate newsgroup.)  It seems to me that there is the least
opposition to "comp.sys.andrew" so in the interest of harmony, I am proposing
that this be the group's name.  (Although "comp.sys" is mostly hardware now,
there's not really any reason it can't have software systems as well.)

NOTE:  The new comp.sys.andrew newsgroup WILL be gatewayed with the info-andrew
mailing list.

To vote YES on creating comp.sys.andrew, send mail to nsb+yes@andrew.cmu.edu.

To vote NO on creating comp.sys.andrew, send mail to nsb+no@andrew.cmu.edu.

People reading this from the info-andrew mailing list with an Andrew Message
System user interface will be automatically asked whether or not they want to
send a "yes" vote; if you prefer to send a no vote, you may do so by hand.

For those of you who haven't been following the discussion, a brief description
of the Andrew system follows.  For more details, lets wait for the newsgroup's
creation.
________________________________________________________________

Andrew is a joint venture of IBM and CMU to develop the integrated university
software environment of the future.  It is primarily oriented to UNIX
workstations, although parts run on machines as simple as PC's, Macintoshes, and
VMS Vaxes.  There are three main parts to Andrew:

1.  The Andrew File System is a large-scale distributed file system.  Think of
it as NFS scaled WAY up.  It is beginning to be used as what we hope will
eventually be a single nationwide file system for computer science research.
From my machine at home, for example, I can now use "ls" to see files at MIT,
University of Michigan, and a few other sites.

2.  The Andrew Toolkit is a very high lvel user interface toolkit for X11 and
other window systems.  It was recently selected as a "research technology" by
the Open Software Foundation.

3.  The Andrew Message System permits the exchange (even via SMTP through clunky
gateways like the ones to BITNET) of multimedia mail and bulletin board
messages, including raster images, equations, tables, spreadsheets, hierarchical
drawings, animations, and even pianos that actually make sounds.

The Toolkit and Message System have been generously made non-proprietary by IBM,
and are included on the X11R3 tape from MIT.  (You can find it under
contrib/toolkits/andrew, and it is known to run on IBM RT's, Suns, and
MicroVaxes as distributed on the tape.  Since the R3 release, patches have been
made to allow it to run on several other vendors' hardware, notably HP's.)  The
X11R3 release version of Andrew also includes a multimedia text editor, a
configurable graphical system monitoring program, a very nice help program, a
terminal interface (an alternative to xterm), and several other applications.
All three parts of Andrew are being considered in the product plans of several
major vendors.
________________________________
Nathaniel Borenstein
Manager, Andrew Applications Development