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WAITS

Source: Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002)
WAITS

	WAITS
     Westcoast Alternative to ITS

Source: Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)
WAITS

	WAITS /wayts/ n. The mutant cousin of TOPS-10 used on a handful of
   systems at SAIL up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion
   of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways
   process), but it was frequently glossed as `West-coast Alternative to
   ITS'. Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent
   exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and
   innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence. The
   early screen modes of EMACS, for example, were directly inspired by
   WAITS's `E' editor -- one of a family of editors that were the first to
   do `real-time editing', in which the editing commands were invisible and
   where one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. The modern
   style of multi-region windowing is said to have originated there, and
   WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and elsewhere played major roles in the
   developments that led to the XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and the Sun
   workstations. Also invented there were bucky bits -- thus, the ALT key
   on every IBM PC is a WAITS legacy. One WAITS feature very notable in
   pre-Web days was a news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to
   read, store, and filter AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the
   system also featured a still-unusual level of support for what is now
   called `multimedia' computing, allowing analog audio and video signals
   to be switched to programming terminals.

Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)
WAITS

	WAITS
     
        /wayts/ The mutant cousin of TOPS-10 used on a handful of
        systems at SAIL up to 1990.  There was never an "official"
        expansion of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by
        a rather sideways process), but it was frequently glossed as
        "West-coast Alternative to ITS".  Though WAITS was less
        visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and
        ideas between the two communities, and innovations pioneered
        at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence.  The early
        screen modes of Emacs, for example, were directly inspired
        by WAITS's "E" editor - one of a family of editors that were
        the first to do "real-time editing", in which the editing
        commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point
        of insertion/overwriting.  The modern style of multi-region
        windowing is said to have originated there, and WAITS alumni
        at XEROX PARC and elsewhere played major roles in the
        developments that led to the XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and
        the Sun workstations.  Bucky bits were also invented there
        --- thus, the ALT key on every IBM PC is a WAITS legacy.  One
        notable WAITS feature seldom duplicated elsewhere was a
        news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to read, store,
        and filter AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the
        system also featured a still-unusual level of support for what
        is now called "multimedia" computing, allowing analog audio
        and video signals to be switched to programming terminals.
     
        [Jargon File]

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