laukee@canon.UUCP (David Lau-Kee) (02/28/90)
(a) Has anyone managed to get hold of any tNt documentation? I mailed a sun address a few months ago which purported to be offering docs, got a reply, and I am still waiting. All I have is the codebook and SimpletNt stuff which came off an archive server somewhere. Is that it? Has anyone got the codebook stuff to work under 2.0? What is it supposed to do? Looks like it might be self documenting... shame it bombs before it tells me anything. (b) Does any of the above matter? Recent moves inside Sun suggest that the %%% REMINDS %%% inside NeWS/OL*.ps might just sum up the future of NeWS, just a memory of some unfinished business. Since the person who put them there may be one of those who have moved from Sun I guess "easy migration between platforms" rings true at last. Come on Sun, SORT IT OUT!!! We're getting seriously pissed off at your reluctance to show any commitment to NeWS. Issue a statement detailing your plans for NeWS (no "we're committed to providing standards" bullshit please, you either will or won't continue development and support of NeWS; if you will, then what are your plans? How many people are you going to have working on it? Are they going to be software engineers or distribution secretaries? You had some good people working on NeWS... have they all left in disgust?). If you don't want to support it then that's just fine... give it to the OSF and let someone else make a swan from your albatross. If you won't develop / support, and you refuse to let others do it, then you'll lose customers because I, for one, would rather buy an abacus than deal with anyone that pathetic. [This is not necessarily the view of my employer] ------------- 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 h
don@cs.UMD.EDU (Don Hopkins) (02/28/90)
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 90 11:10:38 GMT From: David Lau-Kee <laukee%canon.uucp@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK> [...] Come on Sun, SORT IT OUT!!! We're getting seriously pissed off at your reluctance to show any commitment to NeWS. [...] Here here! -Don
cjc@ulysses.att.com (Chris Calabrese) (02/28/90)
In article <9002271110.AA01403@aida.canon.co.uk>, laukee@canon.UUCP (David Lau-Kee) writes:
! Has anyone managed to get hold of any tNt documentation? I mailed a sun
! address a few months ago which purported to be offering docs, got a reply,
! and I am still waiting. All I have is the codebook and SimpletNt stuff
! which came off an archive server somewhere. Is that it?
! [...]
Hmm, I sent away for the docs a few months ago too. A few days later
I got an email message about them not being ready yet. About a month
later, they came in the mail. Mabee the person who was mailing them
left Sun? Supposedly, several people have left the windowing lab.
! Does any of the above matter? Recent moves inside Sun suggest that the
! %%% REMINDS %%% inside NeWS/OL*.ps might just sum up the future of NeWS, just
! a memory of some unfinished business. Since the person who put them there may
! be one of those who have moved from Sun I guess "easy migration between
! platforms" rings true at last. Come on Sun, SORT IT OUT!!! We're getting
! seriously pissed off at your reluctance to show any commitment to NeWS.
! [...]
I've managed to get all my NeWS 1.1 stuff running under OpenWindows,
and even ported much of it to tNt, but there are still lots of bugs.
Worst of all, the server is _s_l_o_w_. Sun claims that the
"officially ready for prime-time" version will be out in June, but
that may be too late. Besides, they claimed that the X/NeWS server
would be ready in "Spring 1988" - look in the NeWS Technical Overview.
--
Name: Christopher J. Calabrese
Brain loaned to: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
att!ulysses!cjc cjc@ulysses.att.com
Obligatory Quote: ``Anyone who would tell you that would also try and sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.''amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (03/01/90)
[Disclaimer: this article purely my personal opinion, and has nothing to do with InterCon Systems Corporation, even if they do happen to agree :-). It contains blunt statements--engineers may wish to preview before showing it to lawyers or marketing managers...] Sun seems to be shooting itself in the posterior with NeWS. When NeWS 1.0 came out, it was head and shoulders above X10R4 in speed and usefulness, but they didn't push it. It was hard enough to buy even if you *did* want it. It seems from the outside as though there has been an explicit decision within Sun to "target" NeWS solely as an academic and OEM product. This is STUPID. Not "unfocused marketwise," or other doublsespeak, just STUPID. Who are the most visible proponents of NeWS? Don Hopkins and SGI. Sun is starting to be seen as an obstacle to the success of their own product! This is no recipe for success. Sun isn't too bad at setting standards when they decide to, but it still takes backing from within the organization. If Sun marketing says, "we'll push X instead of NeWS because we think more people will want it" and then says "why should we push NeWS? X is selling so much better", it sure looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy at best, and bad internal politics at worst. My opinion of Sun engineering is pretty much as high as ever, but my opinion of Sun marketing has plummeted to the point that I won't consider buying Sun hardware anymore, and I don't seem to be alone in this attitude, from some of what I heard at Usenix. Maybe Sun should just put NeWS into the public domain and let people who actually care about it take over. Disgusted, -- Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view." --Obi-Wan Kenobi in "Return of the Jedi"
toms@ncifcrf.gov (Tom Schneider) (03/01/90)
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
chan@hpfcmgw.HP.COM (Chan Benson) (03/06/90)
> 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! VHS beat out Beta because the licensing was more liberal. X is ahead of NeWS for the same reason. When anyone can get source for only a media charge, a software system will get a lot of exposure. > I think that NeWS is superior for a simple reason: it is based on PostScript. Oh barf. I do not wish to program a windowing application in PostScript. I think that NeWS has some definite advantages, but the PS language is not one of them (this is not to say that some of the characteristics of PS are not advantages in NeWS). If they had used Lisp as the base language I would be much more interested in NeWS. -- Chan