It was nice to see the later Java people at Sun (and even later the XMLHTTP/AJAX people at Microsoft) finally pick up some of the ideas the earlier NeWS people were talking about until we were blue in the face, and implementing in the 80's with PostScript, long before JavaScript or even Java.

In 1990 Owen Densmore rightfully complained, "This has been particularly difficult for me to get across to others here at Sun."

James Gosling designed NeWS long before he designed Java. This is his 1986 paper about it, when it was originally called "SunDew".

http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/...

NFS Version 3 (NeFS) was all about applying NeWS's distributed computing architecture of sending PostScript programs instead of using a fixed protocol to interact with the file system as well as the window system.

In fact John Warnock originally intended PostScript to be a "linguistic motherboard" that supported network services like file storage and other features as well as graphics, which Owen Densmore recounted in his "Swiss Army NeWS" paper.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20891291

DonHopkins on Sept 5, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Samsung Announces Key-Value SSD Prototype

It's like NFS 3 (NeFS) in hardware! (NeWS for disks: A PostScript interpreter in the kernel as a file system API.)

https://www.donhopkins.com/home/nfs3_0.pdf

Network Extensible File System Protocol Specification (2/12/90)

Comments to: sun!nfs3 nfs3@SUN.COM

Sun Microsystems, Inc. 2550 Garcia Ave. Mountain View, CA 94043

1.0 Introduction

The Network Extensible File System protocol (NeFS) provides transparent remote access to shared file systems over networks. The NeFS protocol is designed to be machine, operating system, network architecture, and transport protocol independent. This document is the draft specification for the protocol. It will remain in draft form during a period of public review. Italicized comments in the document are intended to present the rationale behind elements of the design and to raise questions where there are doubts. Comments and suggestions on this draft specification are most welcome.

[...]

Although it has features in common with NFS, NeFS is a radical departure from NFS. The NFS protocol is built according to a Remote Procedure Call model (RPC) where filesystem operations are mapped across the network as remote procedure calls. The NeFS protocol abandons this model in favor of an interpretive model in which the filesystem operations become operators in an interpreted language. Clients send their requests to the server as programs to be interpreted. Execution of the request by the server’s interpreter results in the filesystem operations being invoked and results returned to the client. Using the interpretive model, filesystem operations can be defined more simply. Clients can build arbitrarily complex requests from these simple operations.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22456710

DonHopkins on March 1, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Sun's NeWS was a mistake, as are all toolkit-in-se...

Owen Densmore recounted John Warnock's idea that PostScript was actually a "linguistic motherboard".
(This was part of a discussion with Owen about NeFS, which was a proposal for the next version of NFS to run a PostScript interpreter in the kernel. More about that here:)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17077721

Owen Densmore's discussion of John Warnock's "Linguistic Motherboard" idea for PostScript:

https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/linguistic-motherbo...

Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 15:20:52 PST
From: owen@Sun.COM (Owen Densmore)
To: don@cs.UMD.EDU
Subject: Re: NeFS

> They changed the meaning of some of the standard PostScript operators,
> like read and write, which I don't think was a good idea, for several
> reasons... They should have used different names, or at least made ..

Agreed. And I DO see reasons for the old operators. They could
be optimized as a local cache for NeFS to use in its own calcs.

> Basically, NeFS is a *particular* application of an abstraction of
> NeWS. The abstract idea is that of having a server with a dynamically
> extensible interpreter as an interface to whatever library or resource
> you want to make available over the network (let's call it a generic
> Ne* server).

Very true. This has been particularly difficult for me to get across
to others here at Sun. I recently wrote it up for Steve MacKay and
include it at the end of the message.

> It's not clear to me if NeFS supports multiple light weight PostScript
> processes like NeWS.

I asked Brent about this, and he agreed that it's an issue. Brent
has been talking to a guy here who's interested in re-writing the
NeWS interpreter to be much easier to program and debug. I'd love
to see them come up with a NeWS Core that could be used as a generic
NetWare core.

I think you should send your comments off to nfs3 & see what happens!
I agree with most of your points.

Owen

Here's the memo I consed up for MacKay:

Window System? ..NeWS ain' no stinkin' Window System!

-or-

Swiss Army NeWS: A Programmable Network Facility

Introduction

NeWS is difficult to understand simply because it is not just a
window system. It is a "Swiss Army Knife" containing several
components, some of which contribute to its use as a window system,
others which provide the networking facilities for implementing the
client-server model, all embedded in a programmable substrate allowing
extremely flexible and creative combination of these elements.

During the initial implementation phase of the Macintosh LaserWriter
software, I temporarily transfered from Apple to Adobe working closely
with John Warnock and other Adobe engineers. At lunch one day, I
asked: "John, what do you plan to do after LaserWriter?" His answer
was interesting:

PostScript is a linguistic "mother board", which has "slots"
for several "cards". The first card we (Adobe) built was a
graphics card. We're considering other cards. In particular,
we've thought about other network services, such as a file
server card.

He went on to say how a programmable network was really his goal, and
that the printing work was just the first component. His mentioning
using PostScript for a file server is particularly interesting: Sun's
next version of NFS is going to use PostScript with file extentions as
the client-server protocol!

This paper explores NeWS in this light: as a Programmable Network
Facility, a major part of Sun's future networking strategy.

[...]