Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ANTARES.MCS.ANL.GOV!brewer
From: brewer@ANTARES.MCS.ANL.GOV
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Is SUN a "PURE PLAYER" - SunView or OpenWindows???
Message-ID: <9001042027.AA28436@thales.mcs.anl.gov>
Date: 4 Jan 90 21:16:26 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 40

fajita!jalapeno!doc@suntan.West.Sun.COM (Tom Dockery) writes

>ficc!peter  (Peter da Silva) writes:

>>A dominant standard toolkit is something I'd like to see very much...
>>but should it be so tightly tied to X? In programming in X, the UI
>>tends to dominate the app.  This tends to lead to unfortunate consequences.
>>Like, say you want a program to go away for a while and do some work.
>>Under X you lose the UI... and you can't even put up an "I'm busy" sign
>>because it won't get displayed until you return to the event loop.
>>-- 

[Some stuff deleted]

>Secondly the "I`m busy" sign is simple; pop up the stupid thing
>*before* you go out to lunch.  The event loop simply calls the "out to
>lunch" sign before it goes, and takes it down after it gets back.  The
>event loop is one way; I can send stuff to the server from anywhere,
>once the connection is established.  Indeed, the initial contact and
>initialization of resources in the server is generally made before the
>event loop is even started.  To make a human analogy, I dont expect to
>be able to put up my sign after I'm already at the pizzeria; I do it on
>my way out.

But how about something like continously updating a counter or some
informational text while the application is doing its work?
I want to be able to change something on the screen while the
application is working in order to let the user know how the
processing is going (i.e. number of things done, what it is currently
doing, etc.). I'm sure there is probably a hack to do it, but what
a pain in the ass. I don't want to program a workaround for every
little thing like that. (And please don't anyone tell me its a "feature";
which reminds me of my favorite X windows joke:
Q. How do most X programmers spend their time?
A. Programming workarounds to X windows "features.")

   Orlie Brewer
   Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory
   9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439
   (312) 972 - 5094,   brewer@mcs.anl.gov