Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdgw1.ge.com!barnett From: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: Is SUN a "PURE PLAYER" in window systems - SunView or OpenWindows??? Message-ID: <4301@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Date: 19 Dec 89 12:29:49 GMT References: <8912162135.AA03025@iris.rand.org> <4290@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <7352@ficc.uu.net> Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com Reply-To: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) Organization: GE Corp. R & D, Schenectady, NY Lines: 50 In-reply-to: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) In article <7352@ficc.uu.net>, peter@ficc (Peter da Silva) writes: >How about the same programmer interface as well? >Don't you think it's time to take a step back and look into this? > >Until it's there, having a standard *user* interface is a bit premature. I don't agree. First of all, there would have to be a standard language. C++ and Lisp would be a good choice for an object oriented windowing system. And of course PostScript/NeWS. Perhaps the standard has already been defined - CLX. That's X windows on top of CLOS, which is the object oriented extension to common lisp. Does this solve your problem? Of course not. I would rather use an object oriented (O-O) language to support an O-O window system. If I couldn't have that, then I would want a package that would let me design the program interactively, without any programming. I certainly would not want to wait three years for a standards committee to define the stdio-windows library package. And if something does come out - it wouldn't have the ability to provide the features I need today. IMHO defining a standard binding is premature. People don't even know what toolkit to use! Standards are also restricting - they are great at telling people what they cannot do. Defining a standard programming too soon is a disaster. in <7344@ficc.uu.net> Peter says: >Personally, I think terminfo sucks. Case in point. terminfo is a standard package for ASCII terminals. It doesn't make it good. Also - as any novice software engineer will tell you, the first step in a project is the top level specifications. You DON'T write code before you know what it is that you want the code to do. This is the function of the Open Look style guide. I think it is obvious that the top level specifications should be done before any code is written. -- Bruce G. Barnett uunet!crdgw1!barnett