what was the purpose of the User name on the status line?
It was a handy way to inform you what environment you were running under as Softimage|3D on IRIX was launched from a C-Shell.
Unlike a Windows PC where the user practically has carte blanche to access anything on the computer, IRIX being a UNIX environment was much more strict and targeted. Due to high cost and slow performance of equipment in those days, it was common practice to install software on a central workstation or server (not per machine as is done on Windows PCs) and require users to log into the machine to get access to the software. User accounts were used to manage privileges to ensure only intended users had access to specific resources. In order to use an application you needed to open a shell, log in as a specific user (sometimes remotely), then issue a command with proper arguments to specify the licensed feature set you wanted to launch the application. Again, due to high cost, software was often purchased in components, not in it's entirety like today. Softimage, for example, used to be licensed per module. Once the application was launched you had little recourse to know what user environment the application is running under other than 'ps -ef' and a bit of deductive reasoning. There was no task manager.
Anyway, it was important to know your user name so you knew what privileges you had. If you launched Softimage as super user of the local computer, for example, you might be blocked from resources on the network or other computers which could be important if you're trying to kick off a render or access external devices. It was a real pain to have to exit and restart the application as there was no convenient one-click solution to reload the scene from your last session...unless you crashed spectacularly ;-)
Matt Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 08:38:27 -0500 From: Stephen Blair <[email protected]> Subject: Friday Flashback #208 To: [email protected] SOFTIMAGE|3D ToonAssistant screenshot by micharia from 1997 http://wp.me/powV4-39Q what was the purpose of the User name on the status line?
