laukee@canon.co.uk (David Lau-Kee) (09/18/90)
Info World 90/9/10 quotes ParcPlace sales VP Doug Pollack as saying that PPS R4 "incorporates the most sophisticated graphics available on each system [Windows 3, Mac, DEC, Sun, RS/6, HP]". AI Ltd tell me (in so many words) that "window system" for Sun's means OpenWindows. Does that mean it will be using NeWS imaging? If not, does Pollack really think that X provides the "most sophisticated graphics" on a Sun, or does St R4 do clever things? Maybe the SPIM could provide clues... Can someone explain what is in the SPIM (St portable imaging model)? David
voss@sunc5.cs.uiuc.edu (09/19/90)
> Can someone explain what is in the SPIM (St portable imaging model)?
As you should know, ST-80 is traditionally executed on a "virtual
machine" which (in theory) makes any supported machine look as though
it was specifically designed to run ST-80.
Basically, ParcPlace uses machine specific window systems to provide a
"virtual monitor" (they don't call it that). You invoke ST-80 which
opens a window on the host, and then ST-80 treats that window as a
dedicated (normally mono) frame_buffer/monitor pair. Inside the
window, PP ST-80 provides the traditional ST-80 windowed environment.
Except for differing screen sizes, the ST-80 graphics code can not
tell the difference between different machines. ParcPlace also makes
a point of insuring that every SUN, MAC, ..... version A.B virtual
machine can use any other version A.B virtual machine's image. Thus
if your ST-80 image will operate on any ParcPlace supported host, it
will (in theory) work on every ParcPlace host. You can still write
non-portable code, the file-system is a standard problem. However,
graphics are portable, self contained applications are portable, and
the host specific classes are explicitly isolated.
The cost of using a "virtual monitor" is the same as using a "virtual
machine" SPEED. Obviously, writing directly to the hardware
frame_buffer is faster than going through a window system. However,
by going through window systems ParcPlace can make someone else worry
about all the various flavors of graphics hardware. This either cuts
their programming costs, increases the number of platforms supported,
or both.
I believe that ParcPlace uses the SunView windowing interface on Suns
at least in part because this is faster than X or NeWs when you are
specifying EVERY PIXEL. The X and NeWs systems were both designed so
that clients could say things like (line from x1 y1 to x2 y2) instead
of (x1 y1 black, ..... xn yn black, ..... x2 y2 black). X and NeWs
can support EVERY PIXEL mode, but SunView has less overhead.
The above is based on my experience with ParcPlace Smalltalk-80 over
the past three years. I am currently using version 2.5 on a Sun 3/60.
I've never personally licensed PP ST-80, but I've convinced two
Universities to license it for me!
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Bill Voss -- Graduate Student -- University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaignlaukee@canon.co.uk (David Lau-Kee) (09/19/90)
voss@sunc5.cs.uiuc.edu writes: >> Can someone explain what is in the SPIM (St portable imaging model)? [ ... lots of interesting stuff about virtual machines and bitblt deleted ] Thanks. Now can someone explain what is in the SPIM (St portable imaging model)? ------------- David Lau-Kee Canon Research Centre Europe, 17/20 Frederick Sanger Rd, Surrey Research Park, Guildford, Surrey, GU25YD, UK. NRS: laukee@uk.co.canon, INET: laukee%canon@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk UUCP: laukee@canon.uucp, PATH: ..!mcsun!ukc!uos-ee!canon!laukee Tel: +44 (0) 483 574325 Fax: +44 (0) 483 574360
voss@sunc5.cs.uiuc.edu (09/20/90)
> My Sep 18th posting: > The above is based on my experience with ParcPlace Smalltalk-80 over > the past three years. I am currently using version 2.5 on a Sun 3/60. I've since been told that the new R4 version is very different. I'm told ParcPlace has done away with the MVC (Model View Controller) system. I'm told ParcPlace now "supports" color, instead of offering color as a less than fully supported option. PP ST-80 R4 may be more closely integrated with the native (X, Openlook, MS Windows, etc) window system than I described. Now I can't wait to see the new system! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTERNET: voss@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: uunet!uiucuxc!cs.uiuc.edu!voss Bill Voss -- Graduate Student -- University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
baumeist@exunido.uucp (Hubert Baumeister) (09/21/90)
In article <1990Sep17.174602.2031@canon.co.uk>, laukee@canon.co.uk (David Lau-Kee) writes: ... |> Maybe the SPIM could provide clues... |> Can someone explain what is in the SPIM (St portable imaging model)? From what I heard SPIM stands for Stencil/Paint imaging model. This is defining a path and then filling it with color. Hubert (huba@ls5.informatik.uni-dortmund.de)
warner@scubed.com (Ken Warner) (09/21/90)
In article <26900005@sunc5> voss@sunc5.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > > I've since been told that the new R4 version is very different. >I'm told ParcPlace has done away with the MVC (Model View Controller) system. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Yikes! > Now I can't wait to see the new system! I can't wait to rewrite everything I've done for the last two years. Ken Warner
pieter@prls.UUCP (Pieter van der Meulen) (09/24/90)
In article <26900005@sunc5> voss@sunc5.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > > I've since been told that the new R4 version is very different. >I'm told ParcPlace has done away with the MVC (Model View Controller) system. Not true. They have replaced the StandardSystemView (and -Controller) with a new version which uses the native windows (e.g. X-windows), but MVC is still there. This STILL means that a lot of code will have to re-written. I wonder how long ParcPlace will/can continue to significantly (and not upwards compatible) change Smalltalk without losing too many of its current customers.... Would you like to rewrite a major portion of 1.5MByte of Smalltalk? I don't... On the other side, if your native windowing system supports color and you wanted color, R4 = 4U :-) Pieter. -- --------------------------------------------- P.S. van der Meulen, MS 02 prls!pieter PRLS, Signetics div. of NAPC ----------- 811 E.Arques Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3409
jans@loop.uucp (Jan Steinman;657-7703;;;Timberline) (09/26/90)
In article <44474@prls.UUCP> pieter@prls.UUCP (Pieter van der Meulen) writes: > >This STILL means that a lot of code will have to re-written. I wonder how >long ParcPlace will/can continue to significantly (and not upwards compatible) >change Smalltalk without losing too many of its current customers.... Yes, but the REAL kick in the but is going from $595/$75 to $3500/$350 for development/runtime cost! My company had just decided to go with PPS over Digitalk, since you got a lot more for a small difference in price. We will now be re-examining that decision, I can assure you!
johnson@m.cs.uiuc.edu (09/27/90)
I am going to speculate about ParcPlace's strategy with regard to their newest version of Smalltalk. I don't have any inside information (well, not very much!) but this sounds logical. First, it has been common knowledge for many years that MVC has needed rewriting. The reason (I heard) that the fourth book of the Smalltalk series, the one on building user interfaces, never came out was because the Xerox people had decided that they didn't want to document the wrong way, but wanted instead to fix it. This was around 1983. I can remember an early OOPSLA (was it 1987?) where Peter Deutsch talked about his latest rewrite of MVC and why it wasn't a big enough improvement over MVC to go through the trauma of changing. ParcPlace knows how much of a problem it is to users when they change standards, but they also know how much better off everyone is with a good standard instead of a bad standard. MVC was the very first user interface framework, but the last 10 years have seen a lot of research on the topic, and there have been many new user interface frameworks, such as MacApp, the Andrew ToolKit, and Interviews. Each of them borrows a lot from MVC and also improves upon it. MVC is showing its age, and has needed to be redone. For example, MVC is the only u.i. framework that I know about that uses polling instead of being event driven. This causes major problems if you try to do background processing. When I look at MVC as a research project, I would say that one of its main achievements is to prove conclusively that polling is the wrong way to build a u.i. framework! In addition to fundamental design flaws, some of the code in MVC is of very poor quality. In particular, classes ParagraphEditor and Paragraph are a mess. One of my students rewrote them a couple of years ago, so I know that it is possible to make them much easier to subclass and customize. I could give a long list of things that are wrong with MVC. However, I think the thing that is causing ParcPlace to finally rewrite it is that it doesn't work well with foreign window systems, but reserves all the responsibilities and priviledges of a window system for itself. My guess is that it will finally be able to work with X over a network. I'm sure that ParcPlace has tried to make the new MVC compatible with the old one. They might have done this with a compatibility package, or maybe they just ensured that the new system is similar to the old. In any case, their customers are always complaining about the differences from one image to the next (I heard a number of late hour gripe sessions at OOPSLA'89 whenever a ParcPlace senior designer would wander by-- they defended themselves well). The problem is that compatibility is opposed to fixing design flaws. Bertram Meyer described the problem well in his article in the current CACM. It is clear to me that the reason that ParcPlace is pricing the new version of Smalltalk so high is that they don't want people to buy it. They will continue to sell the old version (2.5) until they get the bugs worked out of 4.0. By "bugs", I don't mean broken code as much as unnecessary incompatibilities with the old MVC and the like. They probably intend that only a few people will buy 4.0 at first; these will be the people who need it to start developing products using it. In a year or so they will reduce the price to where 2.5 is now and deemphasize 2.5. As I said before, this is all speculation, but it certainly seems logical to me. If I were a commercial developer of Smalltalk applications then I would call up ParcPlace and ask them what the price of 4.0 will be a year from now before I made any hasty decisions about dropping Smalltalk-80 because of its price. I can't believe that they think that they can sell Smalltalk-80 at this price, so I think that it is a marketing strategy of some sort, and that the price will eventually go down. Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
cdurrett@cup.portal.com (chuck m durrett) (09/28/90)
>> >>This STILL means that a lot of code will have to re-written. I wonder how >> >>This STILL means that a lot of code will have to re-written. I wonder how >>long ParcPlace will/can continue to significantly (and not upwards compatibl >>change Smalltalk without losing too many of its current customers.... > >Yes, but the REAL kick in the but is going from $595/$75 to $3500/$350 for >development/runtime cost! My company had just decided to go with PPS over >Digitalk, since you got a lot more for a small difference in price. We will >now be re-examining that decision, I can assure you! My company too is re-evaluating PPS. We will be looking closely at Digitalk and maybe at picking up the GNU stuff. PPS's justification in their newsletter mentioned that they could no longer have two different prices for DOS and workstations. Too bad they picked the wrong price to make "standard".
obrien@aero.aero.org (Michael O'Brien) (09/29/90)
In article <34327@cup.portal.com>, cdurrett@cup.portal.com (chuck m durrett) writes: |> >Yes, but the REAL kick in the but is going from $595/$75 to $3500/$350 for |> >development/runtime cost! My company had just decided to go with PPS over |> >Digitalk, since you got a lot more for a small difference in price. We will |> >now be re-examining that decision, I can assure you! |> |> My company too is re-evaluating PPS. We will be looking closely at |> Digitalk and maybe at picking up the GNU stuff. |> |> PPS's justification in their newsletter mentioned that they could |> no longer have two different prices for DOS and workstations. |> |> Too bad they picked the wrong price to make "standard". I have to agree. I've had enough trouble selling Smalltalk around here as a "closed" system. I'm very much afraid that, in the light of PP's other recent business decisions, Ralph Johnson may be incorrect in his assessment of PP's marketing strategy here. I'll be glad to be proved wrong. What I see locally is that time and time again, price has knocked any consideration of going with a PP product into the weeds, as far as Sun workstations are concerned. I see a company trying to improve its bottom-line status, that's all. -- Mike O'Brien obrien@aerospace.aero.org