Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!intercon!news From: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: OSF/Motif vs. NeWS vs. SUN/Open Windows vs. ? Message-ID: <1990Feb13.224805.9463@intercon.com> Date: 13 Feb 90 22:48:05 GMT References: <76870@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <15521@well.UUCP> <1504@ole.UUCP> <130335@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1990Jan17.033134.4139@uncecs.edu> <1752@hjuxa.UUCP> <2716@bacchus.dec.com> Sender: @intercon.com Reply-To: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Sterling, VA Lines: 49 In article , bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) writes: > Too many issues are not yet fully > understood, and premature standards stifle real progress. Worse, too > many standards are being declared for political and marketing reasons, > not technical. Troubling times, these. Indeed. Another problem, which I find most troubling, is that the computer industry is not yet mature, either from a marketing standpoint or an engineering one. Premature adoption and enforcement of "standards" for political reasons is tantamount to enforcing a set of design compromises and guesses that may no longer be appropriate by the time the "standard" hits people's desks. Open Look and Motif are both reasonable and useful approaches to using today's workstations, but them darn hardware hackers are already building tomorrow's. In the Indy 500, the technology is contrained to past limitations. This may make for an interesting sporting event, but the technology industry has more on the line. In a couple of years, when we have workstations that can maintain 75-100 scalar MIPS, with memory cheap and fast enough to handle big, fast 24+8 bit screens, are we going to happy with having "standardized" on interfaces designed for the likes of the Sun 3/50 & 3/60? I won't. Among the reasons that interfaces keep changing are: - Hardware gets faster and cheaper, thus changing the raw materials that software designers have to work with. - More and more people are using these things for more and more different purposes. This is teaching us a lot about what actually makes for an effective user interface, but we still have a lot to learn. - Things that were impractical n years ago will be well worth the effort in n more years. In 1980, a 20 MIPS workstation would have been pie in the sky, and waste except for special high-demand applications. Last month at Uniforum they were all over the place. In 1980, Live full-motion video overlaying a 19" color screen was a dream. Today, it's only pricey. If I had a crystal ball I'd predict that for the next couple of decdes, anyway, any place that "standardizes" on a uniform interface will end up restandardizing every 3-5 years. It would be nice to be able to do, but we just ain't there yet. This industry is just starting to hit adolescence, and you know what that's like... :-). -- Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view." --Obi-Wan Kenobi in "Return of the Jedi"