Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!SUN.COM!wmb From: wmb@SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Forth window system interface Message-ID: <8912291429.AA16742@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 29 Dec 89 00:57:26 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List Organization: The Internet Lines: 57 Discussion of the possibility of a portable standard Forth window interface: > ... progressive layers of windowing functionality described ... > I really do think you can go a long way with this model without making > anything that'll break on a Mac or under Gem or Microsoft Windows or X > or Intuition. Correct, but by the time you have finished, you have defined yet another look and feel. In particular, the style of interaction with "gadgets and buttons" is a major component of look and field, and often affects the structure of the application. If Forth invents its own look and feel, Forth will become even further isolated from the mainstream, where the people and the bucks are. I would like to be proven wrong on this, but who in the Forth community has the particular combination of skill, insight, time, money, guts, and influence to do it? I had the skill, insight, time, money, and guts to try it for file system interfaces (a much easier problem in a much more mature domain), but I failed on the influence factor. Based on my observations over many years of Forth conventions and standards meetings, NOBODY has much influence in the Forth community, not even Chuck. > ... various "bells and whistles" of different OS file systems enumerated ... Ken Thompsom cut through all the file system crap about 20 years ago and articulated a good set of simplifying assumptions: the Unix file system. Then he got *real* lucky; Unix caught on, and his idea of the right set of simplifying file system assumptions influenced an entire generation of programmers. This was helped along substantially by 3 industry revolutions (minicomputer, microcomputer, and workstation) which essentially isolated the previous set of "big guns" (the mainframe manufacturers). In principle, this could still happen for windows. In practice, it hasn't happened yet, and I doubt that it will. There are too many window warriors with too many bucks behind them, fighting it out in a mature industry. Maybe there will be another revolution, and somebody will get lucky and ride it to fame and glory. Who can predict such things? > People still run Nethack in Xterm windows, Amiga console windows, > and so on... If all you want is curses, I agree that it's no problem, but it's also hardly worth doing anymore (Forth should have had curses 10 years ago; now it's moot). I can't think of too many commercially successful applications that still use a curses imaging model. Buyers have come to expect a lot more. A text-based program running in a terminal emulator window is not a window program. Mitch