Mother of all xterms?

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Mon May 27 10:49:48 EDT 2013


On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 10:43 AM, John Abreau <jabr at gapps.blu.org> wrote:
> Personally, I don't care if some committee wants to retcon it. As far as I'm
> concerned, its proper name remains "Tom's Window Manager".

  Which is all well and good, if one happens to know it started that
way.  twm was already well-established under both names by the time I
met Unix, so I had no way of knowing.  :)

  But after all this I decided to go hunting.

  I found a copy of the original sources of the first Usenet release.
In twm.c, it is indeed identified as "Tom's Window Manager".  There is
no mention of "tab" in relation to the program.  (There is no man
page.)  So there's some hard evidence, plain as day.

ftp://ftp.isc.org/usenet/comp.sources.unix/volume15/twm/

  But, as an FYI, I also found an interview with Mr. LaStrange, where
he does state that the "tab" in the later name change was due to the
title bars looking like tabs, and it was done as part of the
consortium transition.  "The shaped titlebars made the windows look
like file folders with tabs so [the name] was changed to 'Tab Window
Manager.'  The reasoning was that it was now a Consortium effort and
no single developer should get credit over another."

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/3000/2/

  "And now you know... the rest of the story."

-- Ben


More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list