Subject: Official Sun memo regarding NeWS and X windows

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 87 23:53:33 EST

Date: Mon, 9 Mar 87 16:56:45 PST
From: Greg Earle <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Official Sun memo regarding NeWS and X windows

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FYI-------------------------------------------------

Re: Window Strategy

     There has been much confusion recently in the industry about what
kind  of window systems customers should select and build their appli-
cations on for the long term.  The intent of this document is to clar-
ify  this  issue  and  clearly state SUN's strategy and product direc-
tions. A followup with more detailed information will be sent out next
week.

SUN's WINDOW SYSTEM STRATEGY
----------------------------

        1. Sun is committed to standards. We will support a high  per-
formance  version  of  X.11  on our equipment. Our customers expect no
less from the company which has been promoting the use of standard in-
terfaces since its inception.

        2. We are part of MIT's alpha program  for  the  Version  X.11
release; we have the tape in hand and have made good progress in port-
ing X.11 to our hardware. After looking at the current alpha implemen-
tation,  we have concluded that we can merge NeWS with X, THUS PROVID-
ING OUR CUSTOMERS WITH A SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM WHICH COMBINES THE STAN-
DARD  PROVIDED  BY X AND THE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY OF NeWS. The integra-
tion of the two technologies will be transparent  to  the  USER,  thus
protecting  his/her  investment in application  software and personnel
training.

        3. We will release the MERGED X.11/NeWS window system with the
SunView  Toolkit  (see  information  on toolkits below) in a timeframe
which is competitive with other X products in  the  the  industry,  by
early  1988.  A precise date cannot be given today since the implemen-
tation will depend on the quality of the X.11 alpha tape that we  have
just  received  and  the  release  date  of  X.11 from MIT. We will be
leaders in making X technology available to our customers.

SUN'S TOOLKIT AND MIGRATION STRATEGY
------------------------------------

        4. User interface toolkits are key to the future; they provide
the  high-level  capability  which  most  applications developers will
demand. Both X and NeWS are "Window Systems" on top of  which  "Toolk-
its" are built. The Toolkit is composed of the set of programmatic in-
terfaces which aid application developers to build window-based appli-
cations  or  tools.   For  instance, in the current SUN window system,
there are tools such as Mailtool, Textedit, Defaultsedit  etc.   These
were built using the current SUN Toolkit: SunView.

At the present time there are several public domain toolkits available
for X, but they are incomplete and not product-quality.  One intent of
the X consortium is to make general, higher-quality X toolkits  avail-
able through MIT.  Several vendors in the consortium will include what
they develop in the MIT X distribution; both DEC and HP have announced
that intention.


We will provide our customers with the SunView Toolkit on top  of  the
MERGED  X.11/NeWS "Window System". If and when a STANDARD X.11 Toolkit
becomes defined (and we intend to  be  extremely  pro-active  in  this
area), we will support such an environment. Using the existing SunView
Toolkit has the advantage of offering superior functionality  and sta-
bility  today  and provides a smooth transition from the existing  en-
vironment to the new one.  SunView-based applications will run side by
side with other X-based and NeWS-based applications.

        5. We will release NeWS 1.0 on time.  Subsequent  releases  of
NeWS  will  be  part  of  the  SINGLE, MERGED X.11/NeWS window system.
NeWS' high-quality graphics, high interactive performance, and  flexi-
ble architecture make it a very attractive product for both Sun custo-
mers and non-Sun customers.

The binary NeWS development toolkit  will  be  shipping  3/31/87.  The
price  is  $100; it can be ordered now as NEWSBIN. The licensable NeWS
source product will be shipping 4/15/87.

        6. We will continue to support the SunWindows and SunView pro-
ducts  until such time as our customers have completed their migration
to the new MERGED X.11/NeWS environment.

        7. On 1/15/87, a group of vendors endorsed the X window system
as  the window system standard for the engineering workstation market-
place.  The vendors were Apollo, Dana Group, Data General,  Data  Gen-
eral,  DEC,  Hewlett-Packard, Masscomp, Stellar, Siemens AG, and Sony.
Although Sun has supported X for some time, we declined to join the  X
press  release   because   it  implied  the promotion  of an exclusive
window  system  standard.  We  believed that X without additional NeWS
technology would fail to address our customer's requirements for high-
level  imaging models  and  high-performance 3-D graphics.  We believe
that the PC and workstation industry will call for several cooperative
and complementary window system standards, which will include X, NeWS,
and MSWindows.

     In summary, we believe that the strategy outlined above  provides
the  most  comprehensive set of standards, state of the art technology
and smooth migration path to our customers by combining the X.11 Stan-
dard, NeWS technology, and the proven SunView Toolkit.

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