Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!spectral!sjs From: sjs@spectral.ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: Is SUN a "PURE PLAYER" in window systems - SunView or OpenWindows??? Message-ID: <18717@bellcore.bellcore.com> Date: 2 Jan 90 13:55:50 GMT References: <8912162135.AA03025@iris.rand.org> <4290@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <7352@ficc.uu.net> <4301@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <7363@ficc.uu.net> <4318@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <7422@ficc.uu.net> <4360@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com Reply-To: sjs@bellcore.com (Stan Switzer) Organization: Bellcore Lines: 52 In article peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > If the UI is *that* integral to the program, then the UI or the program > needs some redesign. Here's the crux of the problem: if you want a responsive GRAPHICAL user interface, you'll have to write the UI portion of the application in a particular, probably event-driven, way. There just ain't no getting around it. At the same time, it might just be possible to write the UI portion of the program as a separate front-end program (as in bc/dc in UNIX). There was some discussion about a year ago on this very group about techniques for doing this in NeWS. > Yes, but it doesn't (back to my point) require the PROGRAM as a whole to > be written in an O-O language. In NeWS, you write your program any way you want to, but it is just plain silly not to use O-O techniques in the UI part (which can be almost entirely in the server). > Unfortunately the NeWS toolkit is too big for today's small computers. Which > are going to be with us for a long time to come. Oh, and it's still > proprietary to Sun, and not even available for the small machines > that *can* support it (that is, the ones not dependent on intel's > brain-dead processors). First, I don't know what you mean by "today's small computers." This has been discussed to death. Small is already quite large and it is getting larger. Second, NeWS has been ported to PC's and this too has already been discussed. Third, although NeWS is "proprietary," it is available for token licensing fees. And this seems prudent to me. Anyone who is really serious about porting NeWS to a new platform as a commercial venture can scrape up the capital to do it. It is less than a year's salary for a grunt worker. Contact Steven Messino (messino@Sun.com) for details. Educational licensing is quite reasonable as well. Finally, your Intel bashing is tiring. What IS your point anyway? > A properly designed windowing standard would let you port a program from the > Sun to the Mac just by recompiling. > > Like Guido Von Rossum's "STDWIN" package. OH! That's it. Well for heaven's sake, if you find STDWIN adequate for your purposes, then by all means use it. The rest of us have real work to do. Stan Switzer sjs@bellcore.com