Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!pitt!cisunx!jcbst3
From: jcbst3@cisunx.UUCP (James C. Benz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Iconitis
Message-ID: <17531@cisunx.UUCP>
Date: 14 Apr 89 15:06:55 GMT
References: <1930@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <11555@lanl.gov> <17376@cisunx.UUCP> <8160@chinet.chi.il.us>
Reply-To: jcbst3@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (James C. Benz)
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Sys
Lines: 32

In article <8160@chinet.chi.il.us> john@chinet.chi.il.us (John Mundt) writes:
>IBM and AT&T are working windows into PS/2 and UNIX V.4.  Whether we like
>it or not, icons are here to stay and will eventually take over because 
>the market does indeed cater to the lowest common denominator.  

But at least UNIX will (presumably) continue to allow me to get into a
raw UNIX mode and bypass the windows.  I don't mind icons as much as I do
software that depends exclusively on them.  Even a shell escape is preferrable
to a cutesy little icon that when pointed to gives you the following mouse
choosable options:

___________________
|                 |
| cat             |
| page            |
| roff            |
| vi              |
| lp              |
|_________________|

or something equally ludicrous.  Unix in the hands of a skillful user can
do ten times the work of any window/icon/mouse based application suite on
the same processor and no matter what the market caters to, this will 
always be true.  Catering to a specific market niche is a very dangerous
thing for a computer manufacturer to do, as companies that specialized in
software for the 6502 based market ten years ago can no longer tell you, 
since most no longer exist, and those who haven't learned this lesson will.

-- 
Jim Benz 		     jcbst3@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu     If a modem 
University of Pittsburgh					 answers,
UCIR			     (412) 648-5930			 hang up!