Xref: utzoo comp.windows.x.motif:2702 comp.windows.open-look:1298 comp.windows.x:35803 comp.windows.misc:1992 comp.unix.misc:1378 news.misc:6499 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!utoday!utoday!sean From: sean@utoday.com Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.motif,comp.windows.open-look,comp.windows.x,comp.windows.misc,comp.unix.misc,news.misc Subject: Summary of responses to NetViews Question No. 2 Message-ID: <1991Apr26.164316.1747@utoday.com> Date: 26 Apr 91 16:43:16 GMT Sender: root@utoday.com (Superuser) ************************* * NETVIEWS SUMMARY * ************************* Reply-To: sean@utoday.com Organization: UNIX Today! Lines: 260 Responses to net.views question posed to this group. On Fri Mar 29 14:59:57 EST 1991 we posed the following question to readers of this and other newsgroups to generate user response for a regular column in UNIX Today!. Included below is a summary of all responses received. Thank you for your comments. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ QUESTION No. 2: Is a single GUI standard really necessary? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The following is a summary (not a complete collection of the responces we received): No. Innovation, however, is really necessary, and premature or ad-hoc standardization works against that. ------------------------------------------------------------------- No, just as a standard dashboard layout for automobiles is really necessary. It helps considerably if a manufacturer is internally consistent in their GUI from product to product, however. One of the benefits of upgrading old equipment is the lack of retraining needed. We've found that going from a SparcStation-1 to a SparcStation-2 is essentially transparent to the user, while going from [OpenLook, Motif, SunWindows, MacIntosh, Amiga] to any of the others is not nearly as easy. ----------------------------------------------- I don't think so, and if bloody idiots like Apple and Lotus keep suing the pants off of lookalikes there will be such a lack of standardization that users will become enourmously dissatisfied with retraining time and gratuitous differences. back on track... I think that the diversity of user interfaces is good. Each one implements some features of a perfect window system and each one has a failed experiment or two. Hopefully GUI designers will continue to learn from previous mistakes, and the continuous experimentation will function as evolution. Good mutations survive and bad ones die (unless originated by the Big Blue monolith). I doubt that the industry could ever be forced into one truly identical GUI. Look at UNIX for a supporting analogy. It's all UNIX, but a sysadmin on a Sun will be tearing his hair out when he tries to configure an HP9k or an RS/6000 (personal experience). There will always be enough differences to cause confusion in users and ire in sysadmins. Normal users would probably like the total standardization of the market. It would mean they would only have to allocate a small partition of their brains to understanding the computer and spend the rest getting their jobs done. I like diversity however. The availability of Tk, Xaw, Interviews and the pseudo-availability of Motif and NextStep is nice and provides incentive to evolve and improve. Competition and diversity are vital to the advance of the art. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello Gents: YES, it would be great if there was only ONE GUI for the world to follow. One government, one religion, and, why not, even one sex. The problem with this thinking is IT IS LATE. Let's say Open Look was adopted as THE GUI for all. What does that do to all of the people who have started Motif development? Much economical loss. This is what lawyers just love about technologists. The inverse is true if Motif were to become THE standard. In fact, given the shear quantity of available Open Look based applications, despite all of the perceived de facto standard press for Motif, this would be even a greater aggregate economical loss for developers. Before there was a Motif, and before there was an Open Look, standards bodies might have looked into this. Unfortunately, many standards bodies are reactionary to what drives the real world, and that is sales volume. Do you suppose magazines like Computer Systems News started writing about Unix before every single computer company in the world endorsed Unix? No. They're sheep. So also is it with many standards bodies. So, what to do? There are several developments unbderway to provide a "veneer" software layer that will allow an Open Look or Motif based application to share a common API. Think of it as a GUI detente'. SO THE REAL ANSWER IS "NO." ------------------------------------------------------------------- A single GUI is no more necessary than a single keyboard layout. It is desirable, but not necessary. The important thing is that the efforts concentrate on one or two GUIs sothe quality, performance and look is professional enough for an end user to trust and feel comfortable with a GUI-based application. He/she shall be able to move from one application to another (even between platforms and OSs) and still feel "at home". ------------------------------------------------------------------- From the application developer's position a standard GUI is neccessary to allow a single development effort to cover an effective market. Without a standard, applications have to be developed for EACH GUI available, this makes for fewer applications, hurting the users. From the user's point of view, a standard GUI is valuable not only for the reason stated above, but also for the "transference" of application skills from platform to platform, GUI to GUI, and application to application. Warning: SOAP BOX What has been left out of the GUI standards efforts (by everyone other than Big Blue) is any addressing of the current installed base of conventional terminals, connected to time sharing systems. This is a signifigant road block to the wide adoption of the GUI concept by commercial software developers and users. The benefits of a GUI are NOT based on the graphical appearance (at least not mostly), rather these benefits derive from the BEHAVIOR of these applications. "It is not that it looks like a duck, its that when I poke it, it QUACKS!". Soooo... I believe that both OSF and UI are missing an important segment of users that can benifit from the GUI movement. It would be unfortunate if only users of networks and workstations continue to be the only benificiaries this major software technology. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Rochester, NY Let the users choose, rather than marketing types, the standardization will be a selection of supperior product at the moment. But consider the fact standardizing an unknown is not the best choice. Maybe no one has thought of the best GUI, so perhaps two or three GUI's provides healthy competition and incentive to inovate. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Necessary? No. Desirable? Doubtful. >From what I've seen, we're not even close to point where a single standard would even be beneficial. Standards tend to gravitate towards a lowest common denominator, otherwise the market gets confused and either ignores the standard or "refines" the standard. GUI needs vary. GUI's tend to hog resources. What I need and what I want for a CAD application can be quite different from what I need and what I want for text editing. A "GUI standard" is premature. The market needs to bite, kick and claw some more before it'll be ready to settle down and adopt a single standard. The breakeven point in resource tradeoff just isn't here yet. ------------------------------------------------------------------- No, a single GUI isn't needed. Multiple GUI's fosters competition and thus progressively better interfaces. Look at how the Mac interface has stagnated. However, it would be nice if the user could pick the interface regardless of the application. One of the prime considerations that should go into developing a UI should be giving the user a choice. Maybe you could contact Bill Rouse, the president of my company. Our company does quite a bit of research in the area of UI in general. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't believe that a single standard is necessary. After observing people of various levels of computer "competence"(receptionists to programmers) at work I firmly believe that switching from one GUI to another is trivial task that anyone can handle. Of course if having one standard GUI meant not having to deal with MS Windows then I'm all for it! ------------------------------------------------------------------- Not only no, but hell no. A single GUI would be convienient - no need to learn new paradigms from environment to environment. But the implications of a single GUI standard are frightening. Who would own this standard? Afterall, Apple is trying to own the concept of a desktop, Lotus owns a specific type of menu for spreadsheets. If one company bent on making profits were to own the "standard GUI", everyone would lose. Even if a standard GUI were to be made that was free, the inherent creativity-stifling element of standards is dangerous. GUIs have not existed long enough to know exactly what the right one looks like. If we arbitrarily decide on some specific GUI then it will make it much more difficult to successfully develop alternative, potentially better interfaces. As it is, the profusion of different GUIs is not too bad. Some of the important fundamentals - scroll bars, radio buttons, and the like have more or less standardized themselves (unless someone decides they own the idea of a scrollbar, in which case we are in trouble). Also, part of the notion of a GUI is that it be intuitive; if it is truly successful then even if you have never seen the GUI before, you can sit down and use it - why bother standardizing it? The dangers of enforcing a potentially ill-chosen interfaces outweigh the slight gains in ease of use that would come of a standardization effort. ------------------------------------------------------------------- YES A GUI standard is necessary. There are two issues here. The first is a GUI's look and feel, and the associated standards, (ie Openlook vs OSF motif). The second is the issue of software compatablity. I'll talk about both in relation to the company I work for, but do rememmber that my comments do not necessiarly reflect the views of my employer !! 1/ Look and feel. The company that I work for has just released a report that reccomends Microsoft windows and the standard "Interface" for PC's. The main reason for this is that it will cause a large reduction in personal training costs inside the orginisation because of the similarity of operation of software packages written in this \ environment. (ie pull down menus operate in a similar manner etc) And of course MOTIF is also very similar to windows. The bottom line is that buy having a standard look and feel it is felt that the company will save a LOT of money. 2/ Software Compatibility. The section I work for is into X Terminals. A typicamenus of applications have a selection of items that run on various hardware platforms, from minicomputers to large IBM mainframes. Because of the standard ( X ) it means we can choose different platforms to run differemt applications (Typically, getting the platform that runs the software application best) and then offering our X Terminal users a consistant interfact. The typical user does not even know what hosts a application he is using runs on. From the above to comments you can see that for a large orginisation GUI standards make very good sense. ------------------------------------------------------------------- That depends. A single API for all GUIs is vital. A single user interface (OpenLook, Motif, Presentation Manager, Windows, MacOS, etc... take your pick) is a complete waste of time... different people have different needs in a user interface. The whole business of GUI wars between Open Look and Motif is insane. Not being able to compile an X windows program on a Sun-4 because you don't have the Motif toolkit would be funny if it wasn't so expensive. A simple, high level API that lets you select whatever UI style guide you like with no more effort than recompiling... on anything from a Mac to an HP Snake... has to come about before window programming becomes the great resource sink of the next century. The "UNIX" of window systems has yet to emerge. We're still at the OS/360 stage. ************************* * END OF SUMMARY * *************************