Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu!bob
From: bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT not revolutionary enough?
Message-ID: <26645@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 4 Nov 88 16:13:20 GMT
References: <471@wucs1.wustl.edu> <354@auspex.UUCP> <7092@potomac.ads.com> <1988Nov3.192722.647@utzoo.uucp>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science
Lines: 23

In article <1988Nov3.192722.647@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <7092@potomac.ads.com> jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) writes:
>>What NeXT and the world needs is a true windowing shell to replace
>>the tty-style shells.
>
>"Replace"?  How do you propose to replace the shell's programmability
>with a windowing shell?  That's been the big stumbling block in the
>past.  As far as I know it's an unsolved problem.

The programmability issue may be better addressed by some of the work
on visual metaphors for programming constructs, like pipes that are
drawn on the screen as pipes, with tees and valves and everything.
Dataflow programming (like on the Evans & Sutherland PS300 of yore)
has always been easier with a graphical editor (like PIGS) to move
functional units and interconnections hither and yon.

Perhaps NeXT will provide a rich enough prototyping environment that
some of this sort of thing will someday come to the UNIX masses.  It
would be hard to draw a picture to represent some of the convoluted
logic in some of the uglier shell scripts around.
-=-
Zippy sez,								--Bob
Being a BALD HERO is almost as FESTIVE as a TATTOOED KNOCKWURST.