Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.uucp (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: Stirring the UI hornets' nest
Message-ID: <918@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jan 89 22:30:57 GMT
References: <34500001@primerd>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 31

In article <34500001@primerd> dnk@primerd.prime.com writes:
>On 12/30/88, roland@osf.org (Roland Stich) posted to comp.windows.x OSF's User
>Environment Component letter (by John Paul, 12/29) to its membership.
>Does anyone have any comments, pro or con, about that decision?
>
>What is UNIX International's current position regarding look & feel?  Are
>they solidly backing Open Look, forsaking all others?  SHOULD they?

NO, they shouldn't. Neither should OSF.  Look and feel is a matter of
individual taste, just like shells and editors.  Some people are pretty
passionate about vi, others feel just as strongly about emacs.  People
are bound to feel much the same way about their visual unix environment.
Trying to standardize these things is a mistake.  What should be
standardized is programmer INTERFACE, and a way to build programs that
use widgets (user interface objects) whose code does not exist within
the executable image of the application itself, but is dynamically
linked a runtime (e.g., shared libraries).  This way, different people
can choose different implementations of widgets, or even implement their
own versions of standard widgets, with whatever features they like, and
use these alternative implementations with off-the-shelf applications.

Standards can be way to improve portability and increase the market for
a product, or they can be a straitjacket that stiffle innovation and
lead to homogeneous mediocrity.  We need a way to do the former for unix
without doing the latter.  The standard looks & feels do both.

Just my opinions.

-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
..!sun!quintus!pds