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The Application Programming Interface for Windows (APIW) Standard is a specification of the Microsoft Windows 3.1 API drafted by Willows Software. It is the successor to previously proposed Public Windows Interface standard. It was created in an attempt to establish a vendor-neutral, platform-independent, open standard of the 16-bit Windows API not controlled by Microsoft. [1]
By the end of 1990, Windows 3.0 was the top-selling software. The various graphical Windows applications had already started to reduce training time and enhance productivity on personal computers. At the same time, various Unix and Unix-based operating systems dominated technical workstations and departmental servers. The idea of a consistent application environment across heterogeneous environments was compelling to both enterprise customers and software developers.
On May 5, 1993, Sun Microsystems announced Windows Application Binary Interface (WABI), a product to run Windows software on Unix, and the Public Windows Interface (PWI) initiative, an effort to standardize a subset of the popular 16-bit Windows APIs. [2] The PWI consortium's aims were stated as turning the proprietary Windows API into an "open, publicly available specification" and for the evolution of this specification to be the responsibility of "a neutral body". The consortium, counting Sun, IBM, Hewlett Packard and Novell among its members, [3] proposed PWI to various companies and organizations including X/Open, IEEE and Unix International. [4] The previous day, Microsoft had announced SoftPC, a Windows to Unix product created by Insignia Solutions as part of a program where Microsoft licensed their Windows source code to select third parties, which in the following year became known as Windows Interface Source Environment (WISE). Later that month, Microsoft also announced Windows NT, a version of Windows designed to run on workstations and servers. [5]
In February 1994, the PWI Specification Committee sent a draft specification to X/Open—who rejected it in March, after being threatened by Microsoft's assertion of intellectual property rights (IPR) over the Windows APIs [6] —and the European Computer Manufacturers' Association (ECMA). In September, now part of an ECMA delegation, they made an informational presentation about the project at the ISO SC22 plenary meeting in The Hague, Netherlands. [7] Their goal was to make it an ISO standard in order to force Microsoft to comply with it (in Windows) or risk not being able sell to European or Asian governments who can only buy ISO standards-compliant products. [8]
In April 1995, Willows Software, Inc. (formerly Multiport, Inc. [9] [10] ) a Saratoga, California-based Canopy-funded company, that had been working on Windows to Unix technologies (inherited from then defunct Hunter Systems, Inc. [11] ) since early 1993, joined the ad hoc ECMA group. This group became Technical Committee 37 in August (about the time Windows 95 was released). Willows vowed to complete a full draft specification by the end of the year. In October, the draft specification was completed under the name Application Programming Interface for Windows (APIW). This was accepted as ECMA-234 in December and was put on the fast-track program to become an ISO standard. [7]
Again, Microsoft claimed intellectual property over Windows APIs and ISO put the standard on hold pending proof of their claims. The delay lasted until November 1997, when, hearing no response from Microsoft, ISO announced they were pushing through with the standard. [12] However, there is no record of it ever being approved as an ISO standard.
The Portable Operating System Interface is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system and user-level application programming interfaces (APIs), along with command line shells and utility interfaces, for software compatibility (portability) with variants of Unix and other operating systems. POSIX is also a trademark of the IEEE. POSIX is intended to be used by both application and system developers.
Wine is a free and open-source compatibility layer to allow application software and computer games developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Developers can compile Windows applications against WineLib to help port them to Unix-like systems. Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse-engineering, to avoid copyright issues. No code emulation or virtualization occurs. Wine is primarily developed for Linux and macOS.
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is the foundational application programming interface (API) that allows a computer program to access the features of the Microsoft Windows operating system in which the program is running.
In computer science, inter-process communication (IPC), also spelled interprocess communication, are the mechanisms provided by an operating system for processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categorized as clients and servers, where the client requests data and the server responds to client requests. Many applications are both clients and servers, as commonly seen in distributed computing.
Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare.
In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface (GUI) specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The Motif look and feel is distinguished by its use of rudimentary square and chiseled three-dimensional effects for its various user interface elements.
OPEN LOOK is a graphical user interface (GUI) specification for UNIX workstations. It was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T Corporation.
Computer accessibility refers to the accessibility of a computer system to all people, regardless of disability type or severity of impairment. The term accessibility is most often used in reference to specialized hardware or software, or a combination of both, designed to enable the use of a computer by a person with a disability or impairment.
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. was an American software company, based in Santa Cruz, California, that was best known for selling three Unix operating system variants for Intel x86 processors: Xenix, SCO UNIX, and UnixWare.
Star Trek is the code name that was given to a secret prototype project, running a port of Macintosh System 7 and its applications on Intel-compatible x86 personal computers. The project, starting in February 1992, was conceived in collaboration between Apple Computer, who provided the majority of engineers, and Novell, who at the time was one of the leaders of cross-platform file-servers. The plan was that Novell would market the resulting OS as a challenge to Microsoft Windows, but the project was discontinued in 1993 and never released, although components were reused in other projects. The project was named after the Star Trek science fiction franchise with the slogan "To boldly go where no Mac has gone before".
Univel, Inc. was a joint venture of Novell and AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) that was formed in December 1991 to develop and market the Destiny desktop Unix operating system, which was released in 1992 as UnixWare 1.0. Univel existed only briefly in the period between AT&T initially divesting parts of USL in 1991, and its eventual outright purchase by Novell, which completed in June 1993, thereby acquiring rights to the Unix operating system. Novell merged USL and Univel into their new Unix Systems Group (USG).
Caldera OpenLinux (COL) is a defunct Linux distribution. Caldera originally introduced it in 1997 based on the German LST Power Linux distribution, and then taken over and further developed by Caldera Systems since 1998. A successor to the Caldera Network Desktop put together by Caldera since 1995, OpenLinux was an early "business-oriented distribution" and foreshadowed the direction of developments that came to most other distributions and the Linux community generally.
The Portland Project is an initiative by freedesktop.org aiming at easing the portability of application software between desktop environments and kernels by designing cross-platform APIs and offering implementations thereof as libraries to independent software vendors (ISVs).
The Common Open Software Environment (COSE) was an initiative formed in March 1993 by the major Unix vendors of the time to create open, unified operating system (OS) standards.
Wabi is a discontinued commercial software application from Sun Microsystems that implements the Windows Win16 API specification. Wabi runs applications developed for Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, and Windows for Workgroups.
Comparison of the Java and .NET platforms.
CT Connect is a software product that allows computer applications to monitor and control telephone calls. This monitoring and control is called computer-telephone integration, or CTI. CT Connect implements CTI by providing server software that supports the CTI link protocols used by a range of telephone systems, and client software that provides an application programming interface (API) for telephony functions.
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-like application is one that behaves like the corresponding Unix command or shell. Although there are general philosophies for Unix design, there is no technical standard defining the term, and opinions can differ about the degree to which a particular operating system or application is Unix-like.
Mono is a free and open-source .NET Framework-compatible software framework. Originally by Ximian, it was later acquired by Novell, and is now being led by Xamarin, a subsidiary of Microsoft and the .NET Foundation. Mono can be run on many software systems.
Comparison of user features of operating systems refers to a comparison of the general user features of major operating systems in a narrative format. It does not encompass a full exhaustive comparison or description of all technical details of all operating systems. It is a comparison of basic roles and the most prominent features. It also includes the most important features of the operating system's origins, historical development, and role.
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List of Ecma standards (1961 – present) | ||