Subject: Toolkit for NeWS

From: [email-masked] (Trevor Darrell)
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 87 11:13:43 EST

From: Andre Marquis <[email-masked]>
   I'm still wondering if there is going to be a standard user-interface
   (similar to SunView if need be) toolkit for NeWS.  I talked breifly with
   Saul Wold of Sun (I'm not sure what his position with them is.) and he
   indicated that there is nothing on the horizon.  Is this indicative of Sun's
   long term commitment to NeWS?

There *is* a framework for development of a standard user interface. In
case you haven't read the NeWS manual yet, it is collectively contained
in liteUI, litewin, litemenu, and liteitem. Since I began programming
in NeWS I am constantly impressed at the elegance and efficiency
of providing a class based "toolkit". To be sure the lite*.ps packages
are not complete, and perhaps not standardized yet, which is *why* they
are called `lite' (tastes great, less filling.) But X11 is far from
being stable yet, (if you read XPERT), and all my colleagues who
have tried writing X10.4 code using a toolkit have come away frustrated.

   >From the dearth of replies to my image queries, I'm assuming the user
   community is as apathetic toward NeWS as I am acerbic.  Sun is right out.

   DEC and HP have signaled their commitment to X by developing C based
   toolkits.  They are public domain.  How does Sun expect NeWS to "win"
   without an analogous product?

In the future don't waste the time and energy of the people on this
list with this sort of "but X will win over NeWS" flame-bait. If you
enjoy programming in X, fine, you are more than welcome to continue.

One note of interest- According to yesterdays announced Sun/AT&T agreement,
NeWS/X.11 will become a part of standard Unix.

Trevor Darrell
[email-masked]

CIS Research Computing, U. of Penn.

---

From: Andre Marquis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 87 18:02:47 EST

I apologize for my tone and for naming people inside Sun in my last message.

I will respond to Trevor Darrells comments.  I am developing a large window
based application.  I have to decide between X and NeWS soon.  Perhaps now
is an inopportune time to make such a commitment. I desire only to lower
development effort, cost and frustration (Which is, regretably, visibly
high.).  The question is germane and barely "flame-bait."

My initial, more docile query on this subject went entirely unanswered.  My
recent, virulent posting resulted in a Sun representative calling me.

I agree with many of your comments re the technical superiority of NeWS, Mr.
Darrells.  While I'm mollified, my toolkit question remains mostly
unanswered (lite's all that's in sight?).

Sun is committed to NeWS.  I'll stick to coding.  "Flames" to me, please.

Andre Marquis
Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine
2 Gibson Building
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
3600 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Russell R. Tuck)
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 87 18:03:06 EST

Sun has said, from the time they introduced NeWS, that they will implement
SunView on top of NeWS and make this a part of SunOS 4.0.  This means they
will provide at least the same toolkit functionality they currently provide.

	Russ
--
Russell R. Tuck, III                   ARPA:  [email-masked]
Computer Science Department            CSNET: rrt@duke
Duke University                        UUCP:  {ihnp4|decvax|mcnc}!duke!rrt
Durham, NC 27706, USA                  Phone: (919) 684-5110 ext. 227
--
Russell R. Tuck, III                   ARPA:  [email-masked]
Computer Science Department            CSNET: rrt@duke
Duke University                        UUCP:  {ihnp4|decvax|mcnc}!duke!rrt
Durham, NC 27706, USA                  Phone: (919) 684-5110 ext. 227

---

From: [email-masked] (Elizabeth D. Zwicky)
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 87 00:56:41 EST

>long term commitment to NeWS?

You don't seem to understand NeWS really at all. There already is a
standard user-interface for NeWS, consisting of the LiteMenu and LiteWindow
classes. It hasn't been fleshed out, but it exists, and it's cake to use;
all my NeWS programs have interfaces just like the ones that came with the
package. Now, there are still deficiencies, but the documentation clearly
indicates that Sun does intend to update and improve these interfaces,
and discusses their commitment to standard interfaces. You may be confused
by the fact that one can short-circuit the defaults, or by the fact that
they are in the window system classes, not in the C-libraries.

>Comments?

 Why not assume that the user community is not terribly interested in
NeWS bitmaps? I am an enthusiastic NeWS user and programmer (in the
original PostScript), with four or five fun graphics programs to my
credit, and I didn't answer because I don't deal with bitmaps. As I
remember, my husband, who envied X users their backgrounds, had fiddled
with bitmaps and did reply. I am hoping/praying for the next release; I
want a better terminal emulator, a lock screen program, and more X
support, and non-PostScript people around me want more help dealing
with NeWS from other languages (not just C but also Pascal and Lisp).
A good half our staff will switch as soon as they have a good terminal
emulator and a screen lock. The attitude some of our operators have
towards X is kind of mean, really; between the bad user interface and
the bugs it displays on a Pyramid, it's got a lot of them fed up.

>Andre Marquis

Elizabeth Zwicky ([email-masked] or cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!zwicky)

---

From: [email-masked] (Dave Jones)
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 87 00:57:05 EST

> will provide at least the same toolkit functionality they currently provide.

This is what I wanted to hear.  Thanks, Sun.

		Dave Jones
		Megatest Corp.
		880 Fox Lane
		San Jose, CA.
		95131

		(408) 437-9700 Ext 3227
		UUCP: ucbvax!sun!megatest!djones
		ARPA: [email-masked]

g X10.4 code using a toolkit have come away frustrated.
> CIS Research Computing, U. of Penn.

I didn't read it as flame-bait.   Just resignation. (Talking about wasting
time and energy might be construed by some as flame-bait, I might add.)
He asks a question that I, and others I am sure, are quite interested in
hearing the answer to.

I would strongly suggest that NeWs should have a standard user-interface
which is a superset of SunView.  Not "similar to", but "IS" a superset of.

If Sun/ATT could announce such intensions, I would be
much more inclined to write applications in SunView.   There are some
problems with SunView, but they are not serious enough to warrant pulling
the rug out from under those who have used it.  There's a chapter in
the SunView manual on "Converting SunWindows Programs to SunView".
I sure don't want to see a "Converting SunView Programs to NeWS" chapter.

So, Sun, if you are listening, what say you?

---

From: [email-masked] (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 87 01:11:41 EST

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked]
 (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) writes:
>I am hoping/praying for the next release; I

We're beta testing NeWS 1.1 right now.

PSTerm:

Psterm is faster, and has more features (like settable lines and
columns, page mode, ...), plus it is more intelligent (reasonable?)
about reading the environment (terminal size, etc). I've tried its
vt100 emulation and found it is still lacking in at least one way
there. /etc/termcap has the clear screen sequence defined as
"\e[H\e[2J". Psterm appears to choke on the second escape sequence,
thus preventing the screen from clearing. Of course, when running
programs that don't use termcap to drive the screen, such as DEC's VMS
utilities, there are lots of problems. (Try MONITOR on a VMS VAX
sometime.)

Lockscreen:

Why not use the SunView lockscreen for the time being? It runs just
fine from NeWS.

X:

1.1 doesn't have X support yet. That's a separate merged X/NeWS
product.

Non-C support:

As far as I know, there's no new support for languages other than C,
certainly nothing equivalent to cps yet.

Skip ([email-masked] or uunet!steinmetz!sprite!montanaro)

---

From: [email-masked] (Mike Wexler)
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 87 01:12:46 EST

]]    From: Andre Marquis <[email-masked]>
]]    I'm still wondering if there is going to be a standard user-interface
]]    (similar to SunView if need be) toolkit for NeWS.  I talked breifly with
]]    Saul Wold of Sun (I'm not sure what his position with them is.) and he
]]    indicated that there is nothing on the horizon.  Is this indicative of Sun's
]]    long term commitment to NeWS?

I would like to through in my two bits.  First of all, when they announced
news they said they where going to upgrade SunView to use it.  They also
said there would be a few incompatibilities(This years old and from
memory so correct me if I'm wrong.).  They planned on have News running
Sun OS 4.0.
When I talked to them a few days ago, heres what they told me.  Due
to the industry misunderstanding their committment to X, they are
holding up the release of NeWS ontop of Sun OS until the get the NeWs/X
port done.
My interpretation is that in mid-next year when they get the port
done they will probably put it on top of SUN OS 5 or 6 and integrate
it with SunView.  There will be a few incompatibilities with SunView
and many extensions.
BTW, they made it extremely clear that they don't want people to think
they are favoring NeWS over X, and that this was holding them back from
doing everything they wanted to do with NeWS.

---

From: [email-masked] (Gilbert Cockton)
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 87 00:39:45 EST

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Andre Marquis) writes:
>
>User interface consistency is the most important part of an application.
>
Does the author really believe this, or is it polemic?

Assuming the former, it must be said that functionality still remains
important, AS important as usability. The two should be given equal
weighting, and their interaction noted (some functionalities may
support identical tasks, but one may support many of the tasks better
than the others - logical sufficiency isn't the end of the story).

Secondly, consistency between interactive applications is more than
skin deep, and cannot be guaranteed by anything as superficial as a
widget toolkit. Toolkits, if well-designed and properly evaluated, can
improve usability by supporting a well-defined area of consistent
behaviour across applications. In no way does widget behaviour
constitute anything near the total behaviour of an interactive
application.

Returning to the design and evaluation qualification. Any old toolkit
will not guarantee usability. Most of the emerging toolkits have been
hacked out, not properly designed and evaluated. Even much of the Mac's
superior tooling is due to direct use of Xerox results, and many of the
Mac departures from Star have obviously not been through a Human
Factors evaluation (no control over menu selection flashing until last
OS release, very non-WYSIWYG dialogue boxes - fancy hiding text out of
sight!).

So please, don't rush out the toolkits. De facto standards are the last
thing which real users need. I'm willing to live with inconsistencies
until widget design matures from a hacker's game into controlled,
user-centred process.
--
   Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN
   JANET:  [email-masked]    ARPA:   [email-masked]
		UUCP:	..{backbone}!mcvax!ukc!hwcs!hci!gilbert

---

From: Don Hopkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 87 02:25:42 EST

Oops, sorry about that -- I unsuccessfully munged the header of those
last two messages to NeWS-makers. [This probably doesn't apply to
the comp.windows.news newsgroup.] They shouldn't have said they were
from me.  Here are the original headers, for you enjoyment. (I'm
changing the way the NeWS-makers distribution is done in the hopes of
putting an end to the repeated messages. Please bear with me!)
[If you see this several times, you'll know I'm still working on it!]

	-Don
	 ([email-masked])

From: [email-masked] (David Singer)
Subject: Re: fast bitmaps
Summary: Use BuildImage
Date: 21 Oct 87 16:08:13 GMT
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research - CASLAB

From: [email-masked] (Gilbert Cockton)
Subject: Re: Toolkit for NeWS
Date: 29 Oct 87 13:07:32 GMT
Organization: Scottish HCI Centre