Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!whuts!homxb!homxc!brt From: brt@homxc.UUCP (B.REYTBLAT) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: Has X Won the Window Wars? (was Re: Is NeWS UseABLE?) Summary: X, NeWS, LOOOOOONG, Message-ID: <3283@homxc.UUCP> Date: 1 Sep 88 15:56:11 GMT References: <229.8808111329@jura.ritd.co.uk> <1082@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <66437@sun.uucp> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel Lines: 135 I'd like to address some of the misconceptions in the referenced article. In article <66437@sun.uucp>, hvr%kimba@Sun.COM (Heather Rose) writes: > In article <1082@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> jefu@pawl13.pawl.rpi.edu (Jeffrey Putnam) writes: > >Me too. But I would like to add that I think that the window has > >essentially closed. > > Alot of people said that UNIX would never catch on for alot of the same > reasons that people are saying NeWS will not catch on: to unreliable, > too hard to learn, too big. But, as the > market has demanded more performance, UNIX has caught on more and more. > I think the same thing could happen with NeWS. X11 has many very serious > limitations that NeWS addresses. And as people need more functionality > and do not find it in X[foo], then they will chose a new windowing system > which could be NeWS or whatever else is the wizziest thing on the market. So far, so good. Here's where we part company: > Besides, X is not the only other windowing system on the market today: > SunView, Dead as a door nail. > Mac Windows, MS Windows, .... Not pertinent to the UNIX market. > I think this group of people > (USENET) is skewed towards X because of the type of people who read > these groups. May be. Maybe not. Data? > > One thing X will have a big problem with is input from new devices > (according to Jim Gettys at the Bay Area X User's Group meeting). NeWS > has a very simple and clean input design which could be easily extended > to receive input from any type of device. > > Another problem I see with X is lack of standards: no standard toolkit > and no standard look and feel. "One good thing about standards, is that there are so many to choose from": X Toolkit standards: MIT Xt Intrinsics approved in August MIT Core Widget Set spec being worked on even as we speak :-) X L&F standards: Athena (here & now) DECwindows (here & now) HP NewWave (here & now) OPEN LOOK (if and when it is actually available to the market) NeWS Toolkit standards: NDE (if and when it is actually available to the market) NeWS L&F standards: OPEN LOOK (if and when it is actually available to the market) Summary: X standards do exist in all but one area. NeWS standards have been delayed yet again (into next year now). >Whenever we have a new rev of X, we also > have to have a whole new slew of toolkits...mostly a complete re-write. That was true in X10.4 -> X11r1 and in X11r1 -> X11r2. It is NOT true for X11r2 -> X11r3. > NeWS will have more stability in the next release with NDE and Open Look. ^^^^ When NDE and OPEN LOOK are actually available, and on more than just Sun machines, come back we'll look at the problem again. > And even with future releases of NeWS...it will not change much because > it has been relatively well-designed in the first place. Jim Gettys said > that X was just a hacked together project that DEC latched on to. So even if a > company were to write it's own toolkit in NeWS...that code would remain > much more constant across releases than an X toolkit. Prove it. I can argue the opposite: - X has a large base of users and contributors concerned with portability. - NeWS has Joy, Gosling, and a few other people. Bright people, but few nonetheless. And they appear to be more concerned with selling iron than the MIT Consortium. > One more point about NeWS: I think the biggest complaint aside from > "too buggy" is that it is too difficult to understand for most programmers. > I think that is the reason why we do not see 101 public domain NeWS > toolkits on the market. Learning object-oriented programming and PostScript > (a stack-based language) is a challenge. But this issue should be > addressed by the new toolkit, NDE. In soc.women this argument is called "blaming the victim" :-) But seriously, folks, OO programming is actually easier to teach then other forms. I've done it. [ more stuff deleted ] > > Heather Rose > > disclaimer: of course these opinions are my own...nobody else would > want them! Editorial : - I actually think NeWS is a better way of doing things than X - The dual X11/NeWS server is the best approach to combining X with another window system. - I like Sun HW. I run a network of several machines for myself and others. I've recommended them to others. - I think Sun is digging its own grave by the following actions: + Denigrading X (as in the article referenced) + Refusing to deliver a product quality X11 server to the market in a timely way. I am aware of the promised delivery of the X11/NeWS server. Its not soon enough. I need a fast server yesterday. + Refusing to deliver an X based OPEN LOOK implementation, source compatible with other implementations of OPEN LOOK. These actions might have gone by without consequences, had there not been viable alternatives to consider: + Sony workstations + DEC workstations + Tektronix workstations + HP workstations + Compaqs with a 3rd party color board and awsomely fast servers. this list is in no particular order. - A better way of introducing NeWS would have been: + Become a leader in the X market by delivering the best price/performance X11 server (Sun is quite capable of doing it) + Introduce the dual server about 1.5-2 years later as added functionality. Ben Reytblat homxc!brt Disclaimer: These opinions are my own. They do not represent anyone's views but my own. I'm not connected with any organization making policy decisions.