This is the version of XVision that I received in the UnixWare 7.1.1 boxed set in 1997. I talked more about this in the XVision on Windows 3.11 post.

A lot of it goes unused, as XVision at this point was designed more for the workgroup than the single user – with components such as SuperVision (which I don't think came with the base release), allowing for administration of clients running XVision, amonst other things.

The two components I do make use of are the X server and the terminal emulators.

Here it is in all its glory:

Now let's look at the various components.

Rather than providing a Program Manager-like interface (which actually felt more like IXI's XDesktop), it provides what is in essence a pager. Zones.

This works similarly to the pagers that you might be familiar with in various X11 window managers. It extends your desktop in to n number of virtual desktops (the default is 4), allowing you to group applications in each virtual desktop, and automation allowing one to start applications in specific virtual desktops.

I don't really make much use of this – just like I don't really make much use of virtual desktops in my X window system sessions – but it is nice to have.

XVision Eclipse will add a new shortcut to your desktop labelled "Unix Neighborhood". This is a feature that is similar to the "Network Neighborhood" shortcut to Explorer, but showing configured Unix hosts instead of machines and SMB file and printer shares.

When double-clicked, it will list all systems that have been configured (more on that later), with visual feedback on the online status of each host.

Clicking on a host will either open up that directory in a separate window or replace the existing view depending on the configuration, with the initial directory being the home directory of the account with which you authenticate.

It functions the same way as Explorer in that you can drag files between views and to other drop targets such as the Windows desktop or an actual Explorer window et al, with files being copied across in the manner for which that host was configured (e.g. ftp).

Double-clicking on a file will usually result in something executing on the remote host on which the file exists. For example, I double-clicked on test.c and it opened a temrinal, connected to the remote host, and ran vi.

You can also modify file properties in the same way as Explorer using the context menu.

It's worth pointing out that should you want something similar to Windows Explorer itself, you can start Host Explorer from the Start menu and you will get a multi-pane version with hosts/paths in the left pane and directory contents in the right.

Host Explorer itself is pretty usable, though I do recall launching via Unix Neighborhood to result in constant crashes, usually when doing drag operations between it and the client system.

XVision Eclipse ships with a terminal emulator that provides three different types of emulation – ANSI (ECMA48), Wyse, and VT420.

Each mode offers further sub-types, e.g. the VT420 terminal allows support for VT52, VT100, VT220, VT320, and VT420, and each mode is fairly faithful to its respective physical terminal.

I'm not sure of the history of these terminals, whether they are Visionware or IXI software, or from some other vendor that SCO acquired, but they are pretty feature-rich–even so far as having integration for JScript and VBScript for scripting.

All in all, the terminal emulators provided by XVision are some of my favourites for day-to-day use.

XVision Eclipse adds some configuration options to Control Panel that we can use to both configure the X server and add Unix hosts that can be accessed via Host Explorer and the terminal emulators.

As I've stated previously, I usually only used the X server and VT420 terminal emulator and simply ignored everything else. I am going to spend some quality time curled up with the manuals to discover precisely what XVision can do. I would also like to see if I can locate what became of the system once that part of SCO became Tarantella, Inc. after the Unix side was sold to Caldera back in 2001. I do recall using the Tarantella web desktop thing once, but I don't really remember much about it. Hopefully it is still out there on the web somewhere.

So, expect this post to be updated at some point.