Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!hp-pcd!hpcvlx!ben From: ben@hpcvlx.HP.COM (Benjamin Ellsworth) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: XUI Message-ID: <100920073@hpcvlx.HP.COM> Date: 25 Apr 89 22:07:27 GMT References: <7935@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Corvallis, OR, USA Lines: 38 > More generally, in the athena widgets, the HP widgets and now the DEC > widgets, no mention is ever made in the documentation of how to use > the Xlib routines in widgets. Do the designers of the widgets think > this is such a rare thing to do that it is not worth explaining how > to draw a line from point A to point B in a widget? I cannot presume to speak for project Athena nor DEC, but as one of the "designers of the widgets" I can say that we *definitely* expected widget users to do such a thing. This was the primary rationale for the inclusion of the WorkArea widget in the HP widget set. Perhaps it was poorly explained, but we did try to provide any easy way to do just that. > Let me take this opportunity to say that I don't think it is... Ok, now do you feel better? > ...and that it would be so easy to ... No, it's only easy to assume that it's easy. Anybody in technical documentation will tell you how hard it is to get it right the first time out. I will spare you the grisly details about the constraints imposed on the development of "freely available to the public" code by a for-profit corporation > steve roy > ssr@courant.princeton.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin Ellsworth | ben@cv.hp.com | INTERNET Hewlett-Packard Company | {backbone}!hplabs!hp-pcd!ben | UUCP 1000 N.E. Circle | (USA) (503) 750-4980 | FAX Corvallis, OR 97330 | (USA) (503) 757-2000 | VOICE ----------------------------------------------------------------------- All relevant disclaimers apply. -----------------------------------------------------------------------