Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!wind!daniel
From: daniel@wind.bellcore.com (Daniel W Nachbar)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: What is happening with MGR
Keywords: MGR, mgr from BellCore
Message-ID: <16173@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 16 May 89 16:15:06 GMT
References: <104192@sun.Eng.Sun.COM< <819@stag.UUCP< <518@ics.COM>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: daniel@wind.UUCP (Daniel W Nachbar)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Bellcore, Morristown, NJ
Lines: 46

In article <518@ics.COM> david@ics.COM (David B. Lewis) writes:
>The last I heard from people at Bellcore was that the fellow who did
>MGR a few years back (in his spare time, as I recall) has since moved
>on to other things. The Bellcore folks are facing internal support
>problems and are considering moving on to other things (X, especially).
>
>None of this is firm.

steve uhler, mgr's author, is out of town for a while. so, i'll give
a brief response for him.

mgr was the main focus of steve's work for a couple of years. (he's a very
good programmer, but nobody produces that much work in their spare time.)
mgr still has a fairly large following here in bellcore's research
divisions.  to some degree, steve has moved onto other work
(everybody gets bored eventually) but he is still doing some very
interesting work on window related issues.  some of his recent results are
very useful and simply can't be replicated on X. (sorry to tease, but i'll
have to leave it at that until he gets back to explain himself.)

but lets face it, X is the mainstream window manager and
bellcore lives in the same political world as everyone else.
we are all faced with the sorry choice of using a superior
technology or a more widely supported one.  to my endless regret,
our development organization has decided to follow the pack rather than
lead it. (sigh).  and, many of the folks in our research area are using X
because they rightly believe that doing so will make it easier
for them to share their work with colleagues that work elsewhere.

since mgr was distributed via comp.sources a couple of months ago
it has developed a cult following in several places outside bellcore.
(we don't know how many, but steve keeps getting mail from previously
unknown users.) my personal hope is that mgr will serve as a better platform
for research and will eventually develop enough functional advantages to
outweigh its political disadvantages.  but it is a slim hope.  the paralysis
that has struck the evolution of operating systems since unix become a
"standard" is already hitting the window manager business.

but, mgr lives and will probably continue to live (at least here)
for a long time.

Dan Nachbar
Software Engineering Research Group
Bell Communications Research (a.k.a. BELLCORE)
Morristown, NJ
daniel@bellcore.com, bellcore!daniel