rodgers@maxwell.mmwb.ucsf.edu (R. P. C. Rodgers) (03/20/90)
Dear Fellow Netlanders,
We have high regard and enthusiasm for the technical merits of NeWS, and
highly admire the folks at Turing for sharing a system like GoodNeWS/HyperNeWS.
We have been delighted with features of both, and would like to be using them
as our production windowing environment; however, we still find impediments
to doing so. Some of our problems may have work-arounds which NeWS gurus
out there may be able to help solve. Others may require peppier hardware or
a new (more efficient) release of NeWS. So please take the following
remarks as criticism from friends of NeWS who are not entirely satisfied with
how it works at present. We look forward to reading knowledgeable responses.
ca. GoodNeWS/HyperNeWS 1.3:
---------------------------
1) GoodNeWS appears to work. If we put in our standard multi-line
.openwin-init, it starts xnews with an altered menu system (great scrabble
game!). However, selecting the HyperNeWS item on the root menu does
*nothing*. No error messages, no action of any type. If we use the
supplied (one-line) openwin-init, as I read the instructions, HyperNeWS
should start about 30 seconds after the GoodNeWS Turing Inst. message
appears on screen. Again, nothing...nothing... nothing...
What's wrong here? Xnews works fine on its own; GNHOME and HNHOME are
defined, the supplied .usr.ps, (one-line) openwin-init, and .startup.ps
files are present.
2) Documentation seems sparse. I assume that HyperNeWS itself is suppposed
to present you with on-line documentation, but given that it may not work
(vide supra), a bare-bones UNIX man page seems required, with some very
basic description of what the package is and how it behaves. Such
manual pages ARE provided for the GoodNeWS components. The README
refers to a GoodNeWS document, but we find no evidence of such, unless this
appears as part of HyperNeWS on-line information, which is not easily
read as ASCII files.
3) Now and then GoodNeWS (SPARCstation 1, OS 4.0.3, 12MB, running as
1 of 5 discless clients on a 32MB 4/370) gets *VERY* slow, and occasionally
completely hung (requiring a L1-A maneuver).
4) The terminal emulator is superior to any supplied with OpenWindows (nice
job!)--see point 5 below.
ca. OpenWindows 1.0:
--------------------
1) The default font for xnews is ridiculously small and hard on the eyes.
The fix (for psterm) is to add -fontsize NN to the command line,
where NN is the point size to be used (we find 14 optimal).
2) It would be MUCH easier on the user if he/she could change the point size
and font type through some window-based system such as the SunView defaults
editor. At present, to change the font type (according to the manual)
you must create a file .startup.ps containing the following (I use the font
LucidaSansTypewriter in the example):
UserProfile begin
/ClassPsTermCanvas {
begin
/TextFamily /LucidaSansTypewriter store
currentdict end
} def
end
3) The xnews initialization file (.openwin-init) is terribly limited in
capability compared to equivalent SunView .sunview file:
a) we can't find any way to start SunView applications from .openwin-init
(workaround: start them as background processes from a shell script
invoked as command to a psterm window).
b) you can't specify the location of a psterm icon in .openwin-init
4) Support for SunView tools is clumsy. Icons and windows have wide white
borders around them; SunView icons can not be put behind other objects;
see also item 3a above.
5) The terminal emulation is poor. For example, when you rescale a psterm
window, the font is rescaled proportionally to the window, which is not of
much use. It should rescale so as to preserve font size but change the
number of rows and columns (or at least, an option should be present to
force it to behave this way if desired). We find no way to make ^H produce
a backspace in cmd-tool or mailtool. There is no inverse video mechanism
in shelltool or cmd-tool, which make certain programs (like the nn news
reader) useless.
6) It is still SLLOOOOOWWWWWWWW. When we return to SunView, we are dazzled
at the speed (though we would rather have the network capabilities and other
features of NeWS).
Cheerio, Rick Rodgers (rodgers@maxwell.mmwb.ucsf.edu)
R. P. C. Rodgers, M.D. (415)476-8910 (work) 664-0560 (home)
UCSF Laurel Heights Campus UUCP: ...ucbvax.berkeley.edu!cca.ucsf.edu!rodgers
3333 California St., Suite 102 ARPA: rodgers@maxwell.mmwb.ucsf.edu
San Francisco CA 94118 USA BITNET: rodgers@ucsfccahugh@hoptoad.uucp (Hugh Daniel) (03/21/90)
I have noticed that many folks are haveing problems with getting
HyperNeWS (and therefore GoodNeWS) 1.3 up. Many have gotten a message
about an error in .user.ps and dont know what the problem is.
While testing HyperNeWS I found that it is VERY important that you
add $GNHOME/bin and $HNHOME/bin to your PATH before you start HyperNeWS.
If you add the bin directorys to your .login be sure to login again or
to source the .login file.
For documentation on HyperNeWS and GoodNeWS look at the manual stacks for
each under the Applicatoins stacks button on the left edge of the screen
when HyperNeWS is up and running.
One note, I think that GoodNeWS its self will be going away and that
HyperNeWS will be whats left when Turing is done. The parts of GoodNeWS
that HyperNeWS uses will will end up in HyperNeWS I guess.
This is why I talk of HyperNeWS first and sometimes add GoodNeWS
second in prens.
||ugh Daniel
hugh@toad.com Grasshopper Group, +1 415/668-5998
hugh@xanadu.com 210 Clayton St. San Francisco CA94117tzeng@miro.Berkeley.EDU (Ping-San Tzeng) (03/22/90)
In article <10878@hoptoad.uucp> hugh@toad.com (Hugh Daniel) writes: > > I have noticed that many folks are haveing problems with getting >HyperNeWS (and therefore GoodNeWS) 1.3 up. Many have gotten a message >about an error in .user.ps and dont know what the problem is. This is a problem that I found. In $GNHOME/sys/fixes.ps, there is segment of code for deciding the machine architecture. The default value is "sun3" if you don't have "sun4" in your PATH. I changed all the (sun3) to (sun4) and then it worked fine on my SPARC. Ping-san.