IBM Corp, convinced that there is a demand for Unix on pen-based computers, has been demonstrating pen extensions to the X Window System at the recent Pen Computing ’91 conference in San Francisco, Microbytes Daily reports. Using an integrated display tablet and a P70 computer running a shrunken version of AIX, the prototype featured an X/Motif application with pen-based widgets. A modified X Window server detects whether the stylus is in a pen-aware window. If so, the event is passed to the client process, where the input is either sent to a handwriting recogniser or saved as a bitmap image. If the stylus is not in a pen-aware window, the server processes events as mouse clicks. According to Doris Chow of IBM’s Application and System Software, the company has been in discussion with the X Consortium about possible distribution of IBM’s pen extensions to X developers and users. Currently, the pen work is a research project and Ms Chow wouldn’t comment on possible products that might result from the research. When Ms Chow was asked why conference attendees might have laughed at the idea of pen computing on Unix, she said that Unix’s memory requirements are probably the issue – she points out that the modified version of AIX uses less than 2Mb.
