Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!vdsvax!barnett
From: barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: Has X Won the Window Wars? (was Re: Is NeWS UseABLE?)
Summary: My 2 cents
Message-ID: <5280@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 1 Sep 88 02:00:44 GMT
References: <229.8808111329@jura.ritd.co.uk> <1082@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <66437@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: barnett@steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 53

As a programmer, NeWS excites me more than SunView or X Windows. The
flexibility allows for innovation in user interfaces. I have mentioned
this before.

NeWS is suffering from technology lag: Few are developing NeWS
applications because there aren't many machines that have NeWS
servers.

Few companies are supporting NeWS servers because there aren't many
applications. 

Catch-22.

Until this is resolved, we won't see NeWS blossom.

I can see several things that may change this:

	1. NDE is so powerful that developing new applications will be
	   trivial.

	2. NeWS becomes a standard for the SysV.4 machines.

	   Imagine if a 396-clone has a better window system than 
	   an Apollo/HP/DEC/etc workstation without NeWS?

	3. There are several applications that demonstrate NeWS is
	   more desirable.

	Examples might be:
		 using NeWS over a 9600 baud modem. (I would LOVE to
		 run my Sun window system at home on a $2000 computer
		 with color, etc.)

		WYSIWYG - NeWS seems to be an ideal mechanism to 
			interactively manipulate text and graphics.
			You can draw a diagram, and then paste it into
			a document.

		resizing - NeWS can redraw any window to any scale
			with little programming. Some applications
			might find this very desirable.

	4. Hardware advances - if graphic accelerators can provide
		an abstraction  at a higher level, drawing complex
		objects can be optimized more than simple
		pixels/lines. e.g. curved lines.


But at this time, applications in X-windows are more portable,
provided you are willing to maintain the software yourself.
-- 
	Bruce G. Barnett 	<barnett@ge-crd.ARPA> <barnett@steinmetz.UUCP>
				uunet!steinmetz!barnett