Information about News

NeWS (for Network extensible Window System) was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the late 1980s. Its primary architect was James Gosling, who subsequently designed Java.

Based on PostScript (PS), NeWS started by modifying the PostScript interpreter to run in a cooperative multitasking fashion. Unlike PostScript in a printer, NeWS would be displaying a number of PS programs at the same time on one screen, so some form of multitasking was required. Despite their similarity in using PostScript, the NeWS interpreter was unrelated to Display PostScript.

NeWS added a complete view hierarchy system, based on viewports known as canvases. Like the view system in most GUIs, it included the concept of a tree of embedded views along which events were passed. NeWS also included a complete model for these events, including timers and other "automatic" events, input queues for devices such as mice and keyboards, and other functionality required for full interaction.

But by far the most interesting addition was a complete object oriented (OO) programming style with inheritance. This eliminated the need for an external OO language to build a complete application.

Since all of these additions were extensions to PostScript, it was possible to write simple PostScript code that would result in a running, onscreen, interactive program. One of the common examples was an onscreen clock, which required about two pages of code.

NeWS also included several libraries of user interface elements (widgets), written in NeWS. These widgets ran all of their behaviour in the NeWS interpreter, and only required communications to an outside program (or more NeWS code) when the widget demanded it.

For example, a toggle button's display routine can query the button's state (pressed or not) and change its display accordingly. The button's PostScript code can also react to mouse clicks by changing its state from pressed to not pressed and vice versa. All this can happen in the windowing server without interaction with the client program, and only when the mouse is released on the button will an event be sent off for handling.

This was more sophisticated than a "dumb" X Window System server, which can only report "mouse was pushed down here", "mouse is now here", "mouse was released here" events to a client, which then has to figure out if the event is in the button, switch the state, and finally instruct the server to display the new state. If client and server are not on the same machine, these interactions must travel over the network, slowing the feedback loop down unnecessarily.

The best example of such a toolkit is TNT (The NeWS Toolkit) which was released by Sun in 1989. Sun also shipped a smaller toolkit intended for example purposes and making small programs.

Several companies licensed NeWS and adapted it for various uses, but usage certainly couldn't be described as widespread. SGI used it to replace their proprietary GL windowing system. The OPEN LOOK version of FrameMaker developed by Frame Technology Corp. with funding mainly from Sun Microsystems and NSA was one of the few commercial products successfully run on NeWS. Another one was HyperLook. [1]

The freely-available X11 was already quite popular, so the first versions of NeWS emulated X11 by translating the calls into NeWS PostScript. Speed problems plus the existence of programs that relied on the exact pixel results of X11 calls, forced Sun to release an X11+NeWS hybrid called Xnews which ran an X server in parallel with the interpreter, which seriously degraded the NeWS interpreter performance and did not really result in a very good X server either. Sun also implemented the OPEN LOOK look and feel for X programs in two toolkits: OLIT was built on the same Xt (X Intrinsics) base as Motif, and XView used the same APIs as Sun's earlier SunView window system. After it was clear that OPEN LOOK had lost out to Motif in popularity, and after Adobe acquired FrameMaker, products on NeWS simply vanished. Most Unix workstations (including Suns) now run the X Window System.

Why did NeWS fail?

There is no doubt that in many ways NeWS had a superior design for thin-networked clients, by moving much of the processing to the display, and separating graphical user interface semantics from client program semantics.

Possible reasons for its failure in the market include:

• NeWS needed to be licensed from Sun, while the source code for the X Window System was freely distributed under the MIT License. Any commercial code shipped using the NeWS libraries required licensing fees to be paid to Sun, Adobe Systems, and Xerox PARC.
• NeWS lacked a robust library of reuseable code until well after the X Window System had become the dominant paradigm. This mistake was obviously not repeated in Java. Making matters worse, the variety of widget sets offered by Sun simply confused the users.
• PostScript is a difficult language in which to write low-level constructs like mathematical expressions, due to its postfix and stack nature. That was not a detriment to printing, but such constructs were needed extensively for user interface code, such as to calculate how far down a slider a mouse was clicked. Several compilers from C-like syntax such as pdb (PostScript Done Better) and c2ps were available, but were cumbersome to use and not supported by Sun.
• Writing NeWS apps required coding the client- and server-side parts of the application in two very different programming languages that communicated asynchronously. Coordinating the communication between the two sides was difficult and Sun provided little support for it.
• The implementation of the NeWS window server never achieved the level of robustness of competing window systems. The situation was made worse with the NeWS/X11 merge, which was bloated and caused the workstations of the time to swap.

It is interesting to contrast NeWS with Display PostScript (DPS), which used the same underlying imaging model and language, but did so in a very different way. In DPS the PostScript commands were limited to what was needed to draw things, all other operations (such as creating a window to draw into) had to be implemented using other system interfaces. In comparison with NeWS, DPS lost interesting features like the ability to use a PostScript path to describe the shape of a window, and also meant DPS required you to use the quite horrible (but familiar) Xlib and some truly ugly code to make sure both DPS and X were agreeing about what to do. However it also meant that the majority of the system and applications use it was located in compiled code, making it many times faster and considerably easier to write and debug. The result was a much smaller engine that offered the same end result — a PS-based display — but with higher performance and somewhat more "natural" programming.

External links

• NeWS origins
• a short description of NeWS

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•  • [ e]

News is any new information or information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience. The reporting and investigation of news falls within the profession of journalism. News is often reported by a variety of sources, such as newspapers, television, and radio programs, wire services, and web sites. News reporting is a type of journalism, typically written or broadcast in news style. Most news is investigated and presented by journalists and can be distributed to various outlets via news agencies.

There are many categories of news. The weather is typically presented by a certified meteorologist or, on smaller stations, a less-trained "weatherman" and is considered news. Other news categories are: sports, fashion, society, entertainment, business, cartoon strips, features, lottery numbers, lives of celebrities, advertising, and more. Until the 1970s, when women's lib issues came to the forefront, most newspapers had a "Women's" section devoted entirely to fashion and society news. Papers even printed "cheesecake" feature photos of attractive young women in bikinis, often transmitted by the AP or UPI wire services, illustrating various news events or feature ideas.

In its infancy, news gathering was primitive by today's standards. Printed news had to be phoned in to a newsroom or brought there by a reporter where it was typed and either transmitted over wire services or edited and manually set in type along with other news stories for a specific edition. Today, the term "Breaking News" has become trite as broadcast and cable news services use live satellite technology to bring current events into consumers' homes live as it happens. Events that used to take hours or days to become common knowledge in towns or in nations are fed instantaneously to consumers via radio, television, cell phones, and the Internet.

Most large cities had morning and afternoon newspapers. As the media evolved and news outlets increased to the point of near oversaturation, afternoon newspapers were shut down except for relatively few. Morning newspapers have been gradually losing circulation, according to reports advanced by the papers themselves.

Commonly, news content should contain the "Five Ws" (who, what, when, where, why, and also how) of an event. There should be no questions remaining. Newspapers normally write hard news stories, such as those pertaining to murders, fires, wars, etc. in inverted pyramid style so the most important information is at the beginning. Busy readers can read as little or as much as they desire. Local stations and networks with a set format must take news stories and break them down into the most important aspects due to time constraints. Cable news channels such as Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and CNN, are able to take advantage of a story, sacrificing other, decidedly less important stories, and giving as much detail about breaking news as possible.

Objectivity

News organizations are often expected to aim for objectivity; reporters claim to try to cover all sides of an issue without bias, as compared to commentators or analysts, who provide opinion or personal point-of-view. However, several governments impose certain constraints or police news organizations for bias. In the United Kingdom, for example, limits are set by the government agency Ofcom, the Office of Communications. Both newspapers and broadcast news programs in the United States are generally expected to remain neutral and avoid bias except for clearly indicated editorial articles or segments. Many single-party governments have operated state-run news organizations, which may present the government's views.

Even in those situations where objectivity is expected, it is difficult to achieve, and individual journalist may fall foul of their own personal bias, or succumb to commercial or political pressure. Individuals and organizations who are the subject of news reports may use news management techniques to try to make a favourable impression.

Etymology

"News" developed as a special use of the plural form of "new" in the 14th century. In Middle English, the equivalent word was 'newes', based on the French 'nouvelles'.

It is not as is often claimed, an acronym for "north, east, west, south". [2]

The Desire for News

The importance of news transcends the stories themselves. All cultures whether literate or not have a thirst for news. Illiterate tribes are observed to spend much of their time and their practices swapping and receiving news on the state of other tribes, the success of a hunt or the death of a member. Societies seem to revolve around news and the happenings of others daily lives as a form of both entertainment and education. The news is more than a category of information or a form of entertainment; it is an awareness of the happening of our society creating security. A study in 1945 conducted by Berelson during a journalist strike found that we use the news as a sort of pragmatic information, for escapism, as a conversation starter and a sense of security. We are now able to receive news instantly at a click of a button with the new technology of the Internet. As a result, our Western society has become more globally aware and educated creating the opportunity and yearning for improvement.

Newsworthiness

Newsworthiness is defined as a subject having sufficient interest to the public or a special audience to warrant press attention or coverage.

Normal people are not newsworthy unless they meet an unusual circumstance or tragedy. The news divides the population into two groups; those few whose lives are newsworthy, and the multitude who are born, live out their lives and die without the news media paying them any mind. The news has always covered subjects that catch people’s attention and differ from their 'ordinary lives'. The news is often used for escapism and thus normal events are not newsworthy. Whether the subject is love, birth, weather or crime, journalists' tastes inevitably run toward the unnatural, the extraordinary.

The subject and newsworthiness of a story depends on the audience as they decide what they do and don't have interest in. The denser the population, the more global the news becomes, as there is a broader range of interests involved in its selection.

See also

• Hard news & soft news
• Current events
• All-news radio
• Weather report

References

Stephens, Mitchell. "The History of News - 3rd Ed" Oxford University Press, New York, 2007.