Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!haven!ncifcrf!toms
From: toms@ncifcrf.gov (Tom Schneider)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: Docs for tNt, & what is Sun doing?
Message-ID: <1524@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov>
Date: 28 Feb 90 19:20:33 GMT
References: <9002271110.AA01403@aida.canon.co.uk>
Reply-To: toms@fcs260c2.UUCP (Tom Schneider)
Organization: National Cancer Institute, Frederick
Lines: 40

In article <9002271110.AA01403@aida.canon.co.uk> laukee@canon.UUCP (David
Lau-Kee) writes:

>Come on Sun, SORT IT OUT!!! We're getting
>seriously pissed off at your reluctance to show any commitment to NeWS.

I agree completely!  For a product that (in my opinion) is technically superior
to `the other windowing system', why do I still have to run sunview tools on
top of the news window to be able to have a stable working area with characters
I can read with killing my eyes?  Why aren't new products appearing?

There was an article in (the 1990 January issue?) of Scientific American about
technical races.  It seems that when two nearly equivalent products appear, one
of them can take over because of random market forces.  So VHS beat out Beta
video.  The point is that one product can win even if it is technically
superior because it got the grab on the market first.  Well NeWS is technically
superior, but Sun is being so stupid that they are letting the window slip
by---if it's not to late already!

(Does anybody have a copy of the article handy to give us the exact reference?
- it should be "required" reading for everybody at Sun!)

I think that NeWS is superior for a simple reason: it is based on PostScript.
This means---for the first time!!!---what I produce on the screen appears on
the printer the same way.  And it appears on a Linatronics the same way but at
wonderfully high resolution (I recently finished some figures at 2540 dots per
inch!).  X types complain that it's slow.  Well, that argument was used for
many years for using Assembly or (ugh) machine language.  As soon as machines
got more memory and faster, programs got larger and those arguments finally
died.  When the machines are so fast you can't see the difference, the
programmability of NeWS will outshine X.  So it seems to me that NeWS will win
in the end - why wait 5 to 10 years when we can have a great system NOW?

So let's hear it Sun!  What's the reason for your slowness?

  Tom Schneider
  National Cancer Institute
  Laboratory of Mathematical Biology
  Frederick, Maryland  21701-1013
  toms@ncifcrf.gov