Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!ZIA.AOC.NRAO.EDU!cflatter From: cflatter@ZIA.AOC.NRAO.EDU (Chris Flatters) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: OSF statements about OPEN LOOK Message-ID: <9009041647.AA24685@zia.aoc.nrao.edu> Date: 4 Sep 90 16:47:26 GMT Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background) Organization: The Internet Lines: 112 > I haven't been reading the UNIX trade rags much lately. Can you give refs > for this 'mudslinging campaign' and particularly their claim that OL is a > 'closed, proprietary standard'? That is complete rubbish and deserves the > widest possible refutation. The mudslinging I refered to is an OSF paper entitled "OSF/Motif: Unparalleled Portability. This is dated July 1990 and has a part number (?) of OSF-1-WP4-0790-1. This is a comparison of OSF/Motif with OPEN LOOK and, of course attempts to show Motif in the best posssible light while making the unenlightened reader wonder why Sun and AT&T ever bothered with OPEN LOOK. It is also rather economical with the truth. Although they don't go so far as to claim outright that OPEN LOOK is closed and proprietary this is the clear slant of the document. Here are some choice extracts: "...the XView toolkit is more difficult to extend than a toolkit based on the Xt Intrinsics level of the X Window System. Developers creating application-specific widgets must write to the Xlib level (roughly comparable to coding in assembly level)." (p10) OK, the first part is true. But the second part is kind of wierd. XView uses a different paradigm to Xt based toolkits: you don't program in XView by creating application specific widgets. It seems rather peculiar to criticise XView for making it difficult to do something that you wouldn't normally want (or need) to do. Besides, writing Xlib calls can hardly be compared to writing assembly level -- Xlib drawing is more like GKS without normalization pipelines. "The OPEN LOOK GUI (XView implementation) is currently running on SPARC, 80386 and 680x0 architecture computers..." (p11) In July 1990 it was also running on DECstations. If the Convex C compiler hadn't blown up while compiling the text sub-window code (insufficient symbol space) it would have been running on at least one Convex C-1. Porting XView to BSD systems should not be a major exercise and I would guess that there are several unannounced ports of version 1 around. Version 2 ports will become common when Sun replaces the missing files in the XView 2 distribution (are you listening Sun?). "None of the OPEN LOOK toolkits currently complies with the ICCCM specifications for interclient communications." (p11) This one sentence is responsible for my antipathy towards this document. Sun claims that XView conforms to the ICCCM conventions and I have found no evidence of any ICCCM violations. I believe that AT&T are also of the opinion that OLIT is also ICCCM compliant. The above is a very serious accusation and requires some explanation from the OSF. If they actually have evidence of departures from the ICCCM these departures are contrary to the intent of the OPEN LOOK developers and should be reported so that they can be fixed. "Dependence on proprietary protocols requires the presence of the OPEN LOOK window manager for proper operation of OPEN LOOK applications. This dependence can hinder the ability of OPEN LOOK clients to work with other clients to work with other clients on heterogenous networks." (p11) OPEN LOOK uses its own protocols to support interclient communications that are not covered by the ICCCM (yet), such as drag-and-load and pinnable menus. Since Motif does not support these (unless these features have been extremely well hidden by the people at OSF) we can hardly expect the OSF to point this out. We could play semantic games for ever about whether the OPEN LOOK protocols are proprietary or not. They do, however, conform to the ICCCM rules regarding vendor extensions. The real point is that I have used OPEN LOOK clients in conjuction with non-OPEN LOOK window managers (the X11R4 version of twm and DECs dxwm) and while the clients may not work "properly" in the sense of having push pins in menus and allowing file icons to be dropped on them they do work acceptably in such circumstances. "OPEN LOOK implementations are currently limited to eight-byte [shurely shome mishtake] character sets and are English-based." (p11) Whew --- this only just made it before Kanji OPEN LOOK was announced. "... the OPEN LOOK toolkits, NDE, XView and Xt+, are proprietary to individual, for-profit organizations." (p12) But Sun give the XView source away for nothing. "OSF/Motif has already achieved widespread industry acceptance outside the sphere of its original propenents." (p15) I accept that more vendors supply Motif binaries than OPEN LOOK binaries but the last count I saw seemed to show that OPEN LOOK had the lead as far as ISV applications vendors were concerned. In all probability neither interface has been around long enough for a clear trend to be established. ------------------------ Closing note: I don't like to see negative marketing of this kind. I believe that is an insult to the consumer and is does no credit to the people who indulge in it. Both OPEN LOOK and Motif have their good points. Neither one is about to go away. An important point is that workstations purchases are rarely (if ever) determined by GUI considerations. This means that many people are likely to end up with networks running a mixture of OPEN LOOK and Motif. I would much rather see the OSF and the AT&T/Sun axis getting together to improve the interoperability of OPEN LOOK and Motif rather than trying to score cheap shots of one another. End of sermon. Chris Flatters ----- End Included Message -----