Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ISIS.MIT.EDU!SHAVA
From: SHAVA@ISIS.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: RE: Re: FMS/TDMS vs SMG
Message-ID: <8803201559.AA11018@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 15 Mar 88 05:01:00 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 26

From:	ISIS::SHAVA        14-MAR-1988 20:55
To:	IN%"bsu-cs!cfchiesa@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu",SHAVA       
Subj:	RE: Re: FMS/TDMS vs SMG

It is sad but true that DEC had a user-interface design language that could
run on VMS and could support REGIS and a couple other graphics standards, in
1983, which was developed by DEC Ed. Svcs., and was forbidden to:
	(A)  add hooks for the VMS call standard
	(B)  add hooks to read anything but non-index sequential files.

This was 100% politics--mostly because they didn't want a product out of
Educational Services taking market away from Engineering's FMS group.

They even sell it, in its current stunted and barely supported form as part
of the Interactive Video Information System development system.  The language
is called (imaginatively) DESIGN, and a graphics editor that goes with it
is called DRAW.  I would not recommend this product at this time for people
interested in user interface design, but simply offer this up as a history
lesson.

					Shava Nerad
					MIT VAX Resource Center

{disclaimer--this bitter missive has little to do with MIT, but is rooted in
the past when I used to be an outside consultant of Ed Svcs.  I like academia
better...}