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From: alan@cogswell.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Alan S. Mazer)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: GUIDE (was Re: Open Windows 2.0)
Message-ID: <1990Aug15.195904.6583@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: 15 Aug 90 19:59:04 GMT
References: <1990Aug13.200849.22157@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> <4119@trantor.harris-atd.com>
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In article <4119@trantor.harris-atd.com>, chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes:

[examples of sophisticated GUIDE applications deleted]

>      In a recent post to the OPEN LOOK mailing list, someone was trying to
> get two canvases to align in a certain way in a window.  He had obviously
> worked at this for some time, and then took the time to post and wait for
> a reply.  If he had used GUIDE, the problem would have been solved in under
> ten seconds or so.  That's the power of GUIDE.

(Yes, I'm back.  I have this compulsion to present the other side.)

More scenarios.

A programmer here was trying to write an application where as the user
traversed a walking menu the program would pass information to another
process, and then use the results of that process to create lower levels of
the menu tree.  They learned GUIDE (not a trivial task) and then tried for
days to get this thing working.  Then because I had been using SunView for
years and XView for a while too, we worked on it together.  We never got it.
Since the basic purpose of the project was to evaluate GUIDE, we never got
around to implementing it directly in XView.  But I don't think we would have
had a problem.  If you want to do basic things and not waste time on layout
and such, and if you have the time to learn GUIDE, GUIDE should be terrific.
But if you want to do something weird, it seems better to do it at the lower
level and not take the time to learn GUIDE and then have to work around it.

Another person here just wanted to create a simple demo program.  Something
like a panel with button and a canvas.  They decided to use GUIDE, too.  They
eventually called up with a question which showed that for what they were
trying to do things were getting much too complicated.  Turned out the non-
GUIDE code to do what they wanted was about 10 lines and very simple.  They
could have learned to do what GUIDE did using vanilla XView in much less
time.

Clearly some people are getting great results from GUIDE, and for a product
in its first release, that says a lot for Sun.  But it doesn't seem to fit
well into all application areas.

-- Alan			       # My aptitude test in high school suggested that
   ..!ames!elroy!alan	       # I should become a forest ranger.  Take my
   alan@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov     # opinions on computers with a grain of salt.