Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!rh2y+ From: rh2y+@andrew.cmu.edu (Russell E. Hoffman, II) Newsgroups: comp.os.os9 Subject: Re: a poll Message-ID: Date: 16 Jan 90 21:04:55 GMT Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 25 Mr. Dunn asks how many people would be interested in a graphical shell for OS9... I say ixnay on that. Why turn great os9 hackers into MacInslosh idiots? Who needs to have point-and-grunt capability added to what is already the greatest operating system ever invented? What WOULD be nice, though, is a standard for graphics calls so that software developers could write graphics-oriented programs that could attempt to run on different os-9 based systems. I am presently developing my own personal library of C routines to do graphics on my Tektronix 4014 compatible terminal (thanx to andyd@pogo.gpid.tek.com, BTW). Hopefully, the tek 4014 is in widespread use enough so that I may have a snowball's chance you-know-where that the code I write for myself may someday actually be running on somebody else's computer. So far as I know, up to now if a particular firm decided it needed graphics capapbility AND os-9, it had to develop the hardware and/or software itself. I do recognise and commend Radio Shack on its CCIO and CC3IO/MultiVue drivers/software which allow the development of graphics-orientd programs on the coco, but, then again, any graphics software developed for CCIO or CC3IO or MultiVue will ONLY run on a CoCo. Nothing wrong, with CoCos, mind you, it's just that there are faster machines which would make for some VERY serious graphical applications, if only there were a standard.. -Russ Hoffman Carnegie Mellon University rh2y+@andrew.cmu.edu "It's ok, you're only human; you're not perfect... that's why we have computers....