Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!mephisto!prism!msd!rhoward From: rhoward@msd.gatech.edu (Robert L. Howard) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: What's what in OPEN LOOK/OpenWindows (long) Message-ID: Date: 21 Sep 90 12:24:56 GMT References: <9009191654.AA05730@spiff> <1990Sep20.165120.14156@alphalpha.com> Sender: news@prism.gatech.EDU Organization: Georgia Tech Research Institute Lines: 85 In <1990Sep20.165120.14156@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes: >In article <9009191654.AA05730@spiff> brett@SPIFF.DEN.MMC.COM (Brett Ballantyne) writes: >>Not to start another Motif vs. OPEN LOOK holy war... >*FLAME ON* >No holy war here, this is personal... Perhaps this is why you are a little less than rational... [[ BTW, pick a window size that fits on most (80 col) screens ]] >>OPEN LOOK is technically superior to Motif (a debatable issue to be sure, >*Which* Open Look? There is only one Open Look spec. It involves a functional spec and a style guide. > I've seen nothing detailing which L&F is technically superior, ^^^ >so you must be talking implementation(I haven't seen any papers on that either, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ >but I'd like to, do you have references?). From a *user* standpoint it's the L&F that matter (along with consistency of the applications that 'comply' to that L&F). I understand developers wanting a good toolkit, but for the users the L&F is what counts. I don't think any developer is going to be able to say to his customers "Hey, we chose the best toolkit to enhance our productivity. We got the app to market faster that way." Well, this is a nice argument considering that if the app is long getting to market nobody benefits but that won't win you any long term customers. They ultimately want the 'best' product. As for papers, if you count the trade rags, I've seen lots of opinions flying. Lots of them do refer to the L&F. For example, pro-OL people argue that the OL spec is a lot 'tighter' thus ensuring that 'compliant' applications will be 'more consistent'. > The only implementation of XView submitted ^^^^^ >was Xt+. I am sure you meant OpenLook (as Xview is also a toolkit). > We went over the design and implementation - including looking at the code, >of every submission that made the first cut (yes, Xt+ did). Of the toolkits submitted, >I believe we chose the best implementation. This is what I feel is the flaw in the OSF reasoning. Sure, I can understand the need to take care of their members needs, but I thought OSF was formed to created standards that would help us users. The real end users (assuming UNIX/workstation vendors want to penetrate the business markets) aren't going to care about programming issues (toolkits, implementations, etc.) but rather about how the resulting apps are going to make their live better. This is not to say that OSF made a bad choice in Motif (I can think of a lot of good end user reasons to pick it) but I think justifying it with the implementation arguments is questionable at best. > The closest >thing we made to a "political" decision was to go with C and the Intrinsics. I'm not >100% comfortable with either of those decisions, but using C++ would have limited >market acceptance, and the non-Intrinsics options weren't capable enough so I think >it was probably the right way to go. Again more programmer issues rather than end user issues. Now, I know someone is going to say, "Hey! If we ignored the developer we wouldn't have had a chance at the end user because he would have never gotten an application on his desk." That's a good point but I'm not sure I can exactly buy it. After all there have been MS Windows applications for along time know (because the market demanded them) yet from what I here it was one of the most hoorid things to have to write code for. >*FLAME OFF* Thank goodness... Robert -- | Robert L. Howard | Georgia Tech Research Institute | | rhoward@msd.gatech.edu | MATD Laboratory | | (404) 528-7165 | Atlanta, Georgia 30332 | | UUCP: ...!{allegra,amd,hplabs,ut-ngp}!gatech!msd!rhoward |