Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mephisto!bloom-beacon!unify.UUCP!grp
From: grp@unify.UUCP (Greg Pasquariello)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Open look vs Motif
Message-ID: <9007032022.AA13586@magpie>
Date: 3 Jul 90 20:22:12 GMT
References: <9007031645.AA00970@kestrel.>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Reply-To: think!ames!unify.com!grp@eddie.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 77

Paul Raveling writes:
>
>> In article <9158@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Bill Davidson writes:
>> |> From: unify!kestrel.raveling@uunet.uu.net (Paul Raveling)
>> 
>> |> 	It may be worth mentioning vanilla MIT X11 as an alternative.
>...
>>   You may *like* it better, but in what way is it technically better? My
>> personal choice is MOTIF, but I regularly use olwm over twm because of
>> the consistent button usage.
>
>	I'd argue that twm at least is technically better than olwm
>	because it provides capabilities that seem to be unavailable
>	with olwm, and some of them are important.  If there's a way
>	to get olwm to do some of these and I'm not aware of it, I'd
>	be delighted to hear about it.
>
>	Some items of this sort are:
>
>		0.  QUIT GRABBING MY FUNCTION KEYS.

	Any function keys Open Look grabs can be overriden.

>		1.  ALWAYS raise a window when it's moved or resized

	I would say NEVER raise a window unless I tell it to.  It's awful 
	obnoxious to do something that I did not want.  But these our simply
	differing opinions.

>		2.  Quit adding an internal border to all windows.

	There is no internal border added to any windows.

>		3.  Disable titlebars on a per-client basis

	Title bars are there so that the user knows what they are working with.
	This is a benefit to naive users; they know, at a glance, what they
	are working with.  I do agree, however, that this behavior should be
	configurable.  I would venture a guess that this is the most oft-cited
	"problem" with the window manager.

	Does the Motif WM allow this?  Remember, what we started talking about
	was the relative merits of Open Look vs Motif.  If we want to talk
	technical excellence, an argument can be made that NeWS is _far_ 
	superior to X.  And, Open Look can run in a NeWS environment, as it
	is only a specification.
>
>
>	Perhaps those and various others could be phrased in a more
>	general way as:
>
>		If the default behaviors aren't ideal, provide easy
>		ways to change ANY default behavior.  This also means
>		that I have some quarrels with various aspects of
>		the OpenLook Way of Life in general.
>

	I agree that, in an ideal world, you should be able to change any
	behaviour you don't like.

>	Something else I've been waiting for is a window manager, or
>	any client for that matter, that could handle an interactive
>	dialog to reconfigure its options.  Users, and maybe even
>	developers, shouldn't always have to sort out whether to change
>	.whatnotrc, .Xresources, .Xdefaults, or (gasp)
>	/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/whatever [or Whatever, or WHatever].

	Here, here.
>
>
>------------------
>Paul Raveling
>Raveling@unify.com
>
>

-Greg Pasquariello	grp@unify.com