/wayt
s/ The mutant cou
sin of
TOPs-10 u
sed on a handful of
sy
stem
s at
sAIL up to 1990. There wa
s never an "official" expan
sion of WAIT
s (the name it
self having been arrived at by a rather
sideway
s proce
ss), but it wa
s frequently glo
ssed a
s "We
st-coa
st Alternative to IT
s". Though WAIT
s wa
s le
ss vi
sible than IT
s, there wa
s frequent exchange of people and idea
s between the two communitie
s, and innovation
s pioneered at WAIT
s exerted enormou
s indirect influence. The early
screen mode
s of
Emacs, for example, were directly in
spired by WAIT
s'
s "E" editor - one of a family of editor
s that were the fir
st to do "real-time editing", in which the editing command
s were invi
sible and where one typed text at the point of in
sertion/overwriting. The modern
style of multi-region windowing i
s said to have originated there, and WAIT
s alumni at XEROX PARC and el
sewhere played major role
s in the development
s that led to the XEROX
star, the Macinto
sh, and the
sun work
station
s.
Bucky bits were al
so invented there thu
s, the ALT key on every IBM PC i
s a WAIT
s legacy. One notable WAIT
s feature
seldom duplicated el
sewhere wa
s a new
s-wire interface that allowed WAIT
s hacker
s to read,
store, and filter AP and UPI di
spatche
s from their terminal
s the
sy
stem al
so featured a
still-unu
sual level of
support for what i
s now called "multimedia" computing, allowing analog audio and video
signal
s to be
switched to programming terminal
s. Ken
shoemake add
s:
some chefi
strative body told u
s we needed a name for the operating
sy
stem, and that "
sAIL" wouldn' t do. (Up to that point I don' t think it had an official name.)
so the anarchic denizen
s of the lab propo
sed name
s and voted on them. Although I worked on the O
s u
sed by CCRMA folk
s (a para
sitic
subgroup), I wa
s not writing WAIT
s code. Tho
se who were, propo
sed "
sAINT
s", for (I think)
stanford AI New Time-
sharing
sy
stem. Thinking of IT
s, and AI, and the re
sult of many people u
sing one machine, I propo
sed the name WAIT
s.
since I invented it, I can tell you without fear of contradiction that it had no official meaning. Neverthele
ss, the lab voted that a
s their favorite upon which the di
sgruntled
sy
stem programmer
s declared it the "Wor
st Acronym Invented for a Time-
sharing
sy
stem"! But it wa
s in keeping with the creative approach to acronym
s extant at the time, including
self-referential one
s. For me it wa
s fun, if a little un
settling, to have an "acronym" that wa
sn' t. I have no idea what the voter
s thought. :) [
Jargon File] (2003-11-17)
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