[W/K] :: {WAITS

  WAITS
       Westcoast Alternative to ITS
       
       

  WAITS /wayts/ n. The mutant cousin of {TOPS-10 used on a handful of
     systems at {SAIL up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion
     of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways
     process), but it was frequently glossed as `West-coast Alternative to
     ITS'. Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent
     exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and
     innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence. The
     early screen modes of EMACS, for example, were directly inspired by
     WAITS's `E' editor -- one of a family of editors that were the first to
     do `real-time editing', in which the editing commands were invisible and
     where one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. The modern
     style of multi-region windowing is said to have originated there, and
     WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and elsewhere played major roles in the
     developments that led to the XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and the Sun
     workstations. Also invented there were bucky bits -- thus, the ALT key
     on every IBM PC is a WAITS legacy. One WAITS feature very notable in
     pre-Web days was a news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to
     read, store, and filter AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the
     system also featured a still-unusual level of support for what is now
     called `multimedia' computing, allowing analog audio and video signals
     to be switched to programming terminals.
  
  

  WAITS
       
          /wayts/ The mutant cousin of TOPS-10 used on a handful of
          systems at SAIL up to 1990.  There was never an "official"
          expansion of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by
          a rather sideways process), but it was frequently glossed as
          "West-coast Alternative to ITS".  Though WAITS was less
          visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and
          ideas between the two communities, and innovations pioneered
          at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence.  The early
          screen modes of Emacs, for example, were directly inspired
          by WAITS's "E" editor - one of a family of editors that were
          the first to do "real-time editing", in which the editing
          commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point
          of insertion/overwriting.  The modern style of multi-region
          windowing is said to have originated there, and WAITS alumni
          at XEROX PARC and elsewhere played major roles in the
          developments that led to the XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and
          the Sun workstations.  Bucky bits were also invented there
          --- thus, the ALT key on every IBM PC is a WAITS legacy.  One
          notable WAITS feature seldom duplicated elsewhere was a
          news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to read, store,
          and filter AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the
          system also featured a still-unusual level of support for what
          is now called "multimedia" computing, allowing analog audio
          and video signals to be switched to programming terminals.
       
          [{Jargon File]