Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:13361 comp.windows.misc:147 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!vdsvax!barnett From: barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: A/UX window systems, Mac toolbox, etc Message-ID: <3996@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> Date: 1 Mar 88 04:45:38 GMT References: <4129@hoptoad.uucp> <283@rhesus.primate.wisc.edu> <1710@ssc-vax.UUCP> Reply-To: barnett@steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 32 In article <1710@ssc-vax.UUCP> benoni@ssc-vax.UUCP (Charles L Ditzel) writes: |The toolbox is hardly something to be touting ... the Mac Toolbox lacks the |sophistication of other systems that incorporate network window management |and extensible window servers. Three years ago this might have been an |appropriate point. My naive impression of the Mac Windows was that is was a useful window system given a single process and a small screen. But I don't understand how Apple can provide the same interface in a multi application environment. How would pull-down menus work with multiple applications? They can't all grab the top of the screen. Context-sensitive pop-up menus make much more sense to me. But then you would need more than one button on the mouse. Someone once made the point that it is easy to grow downward than to grow upward. That is, it is easier to convert a multi-application, multi-tasking, color window system into a single color, single user system than vice versa. I bet Apple is finding out that converting the Mac toolbox to Unix is more complicated than they thought. | Rather it is Apple that is moving more toward |industry standards with NeWS and X sitting on their system. Moving? I think "dragged kicking and screaming" is more appropriate :-) NeWS for the Mac II is looking better and better. Too bad that NeWS wouldn't be practical for a non-A/UX system. -- Bruce G. Barnett uunet!steinmetz!barnett