To: shawna@sun.com
Cc: robin@sun.com
Subject: beta X11/NeWS for University of Maryland?
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Hi! I work at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction
Lab, and we are very interested in beta testing X11/NeWS. Would it be
possible for us to get a copy?

Our research is into the the design of hypertext systems, and the
implementation and evaluation of user interfaces. We use NeWS to
prototype, test, and refine novel user interfaces strategies. We're
currently developing an application called HyperTIES, a hypermedia
browser, under NeWS 1.1. The University had NeWS 1.1 sources, which
I'm responsible for maintaining. Soon we will begin work on an X11
implementation of HyperTIES, but we will still want to be able to use
the graphical authoring tools that we've developed under NeWS.

I've been using NeWS heavily ever since NeWS 1.0 came out. I've
written many NeWS programs, and have done a lot of work with the
toolkit. I implemented pie menus (round pop-up menus, with all the
choices close to the cursor and in different directions), by building
on top of the Lite toolkit in NeWS 1.0. I updated and enhanced them to
work with NeWS 1.1, and went on to implement various pie menu
subclasses, such as "pull out" pie menus, with which I've made
specialized font and color selection menus. I've written a paper about
my research into pie menus, that has been accepted for publication in
the Communications of the ACM! My NeWS implementation of pie menus is
freely available on the public domain.  NeWS has been the perfect
environment for developing the look and feel of pie menus, since it
has an object oriented toolkit, an interactive programming language, a
high level imaging model, and arbitrarily shaped windows. I am
extremely interested in reimplementing pie menus with the NDE toolkit,
and finding out how the look and feel can be incorporated into OPEN
LOOK. I think NDE is just the platform to support our continuing
research.

In my spare time, I maintain the NeWS-makers mailing list, a
electronic discussion group about NeWS that's distributed worldwide.
I keep an archive of public domain NeWS software and information,
which is available over the Internet, and that I'm organizing to go on
the Sun Users Group tape. I'd like to convert many of the useful
public domain NeWS programs to run under X11/NeWS. It will be an
excellent way to test out X11/NeWS, and at the same time will create a
base of free X11/NeWS software that everybody can use. I hope that
this will lead to a collection of contributed (i.e. unsupported by
Sun) public domain software being distributed with NeWS.

I spent last summer working at UniPress Software for Mike Gallaher,
rewriting and extending the NeWS interface to the Emacs text editor.
I implemented a PostScript VT100 terminal emulator for Wedge
Computer's Macintosh port of NeWS. Last winter, working at the Human
Computer Interaction Lab for Ben Shneiderman, I implemented a mouse
sensative text and graphics formatter for NeWS HyperTIES hypermedia
system. The summer before that, I worked at Sun Microsystems in
Mountain View for Gudrun Polak and Mitch Bradley, using Forth to
implement a new user interface and extension language for the CADroid
computer aided circuit board design system.

The Sun Education division donated a Sun-4/110C to our lab, which
should be shipped to us in a few weeks. Presently we are using a 3/50
for all of our NeWS development. We are really looking forward to
using X11/NeWS on the Sun-4, and giving you feedback about our
experiences testing, implementing, and converting software to run
under X11/NeWS. Could you please let us know if there's any way we can
get a copy of X11/NeWS to beta test in the near future? We want to
make the best use of it as possible!

	-Don