Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gssc.UUCP!jdm
From: jdm@gssc.UUCP (John D. Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: OPEN LOOK
Message-ID: <8905172112.AA13166@decwrl.dec.com>
Date: 17 May 89 15:48:28 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 46


I am interested in comparing notes with people writing to or using the
OPEN LOOK GUI, either from AT&T or Sun.  Any word (official or not) whether
AT&T has decided to include the OL X Toolkit in the Application Binary
Interface spec for SVR4.0?

As a OL Beta Program participant, I must comment that I am somewhat impressed
with the quality of the beta product, even from as far back as January.  As
I type this, I am using the OL window manager, workspace manager, and file
manager (Mac-like file browser) built from January source code and it works
quite well.  I had a little trouble compiling it on 386/ix (so I could use it
with our UNIX and DOS X servers), since they had mucked with the Imakefile
rules and templates, but that wasn't too bad for code that, I'm told, wasn't
supposed to be ready for release.

The Open Look Technical Specification (Revision 17) is excellent.  This thing
is two-inches thick and gives detail down to the engineering specifications
of the scrollbars, pushpins, etc.  You can really tell which documents came
from Sun and which ones from AT&T.  The Sun docs are really alright - 
informative, complete, pictorial, humorous - obviously "California casual."
The AT&T doc is not nearly as "hip" and the material was not as well-understood
by the author(s), but it is usable.

I have played briefly with the OL software on Suns, but that was last
August.  I'll be in a better position to compare later this summer, when I 
get a 3/80.  No suprise that Sun is several steps ahead of AT&T on implementing
the OL Technical Spec and providing a wide variety of OL apps, but the AT&T 
stuff is quite usable, particularly from a developer's standpoint.

I really don't want to get into any GUI religious battle, but I would like
to point out a myth that seems to be prevalent in this industry: that apps
written to PM, MS-Win, and MOTIF are all cross-portable, since they kinda-
sorta-maybe look similar from the user's end.  This is NOT the case.  Ask
anyone who has written to any two of those three.  Apps don't port well from
even MS-Win and PM, and those came from the same company.  This is not a slam
that MS et al didn't make compatability an issue - the point is that people
shouldn't believe that if they write their apps to PM, MS-Win, or MOTIF that
they will not have to do any work to get it to the another platform.

standard disclaimers apply.

--jdm
...!{tektronix!verdix}!sequent!gssc!jdm                John David Miller
(503) 641-2200                                         Graphic Software Systems
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