AT&T has reached the next stage in the introduction of its Open Look user interface with the announcement that source code for the graphical Unix interface and X Window toolkit will be available for shipment by the end of the month. AT&T first introduced Open Look, which it developed in association with Sun Microsystems Inc using technology licensed from Xerox Corp, back in April 1988 as a written specification and style guide. It provides users with a multi-windowed environment, and allows pop up menus to be accessed anywhere on screen, and kept on screen by pinning them with graphical push pins. Other features include stacks of push buttons for program access, and an elevator at the side of the screen to show position in a document. AT&T says it has now sent copies out to around 60 beta test sites. Available from AT&T’s newly established Unix Software Operation, the products will include source code for the Open Look End User System, which allows an end-user to run Open Look graphical and text applications, and for the Open Look X Toolkit, including an X widget library, for programmers creating applications that use Open Look. Based on X Window 11 release 2, the toolkit runs on top of AT&T’s XWIN implementation of X Window for Intel 80386-based systems. Along with the software, the company also released a trade mark guide, which sets out the terms and conditions for developers to license the source code of both Open Look and of XWIN.
