hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (02/15/90)
I'm curious how other sites are using (or planning to use) XNeWS. At the moment our users are split between SunView 1 and MIT's X (with twm). I think the majority are still using SunView. By the summer we'd like to move everybody to a system that can run X. Our applications are increasingly X-based. Originally I had hoped the XNeWS would be in good enough shape that we could move our user community to it. For those still on 4MB systems, I had hoped to have them use MIT's X with olwm, so that they'd have the same user interface as XNeWS. This plan no longer looks either desirable or feasible. XNeWS doesn't appear to be in good enough shape to give to large numbers of end users. Aside from bugs (like when you iconify a window, it vanishes, and various glitches in focus management), the software simply isn't polished enough for "real" users. If you compare the facilities of twm with XNeWS (the ability to define special function keys, tailor the form of the windows, the way icons are handled, etc.), you see the difference between a production quality system and a rough draft. Of course you can fix the NeWS side yourself in Postscript, but as far as I can tell, there's no way to tailor pswm. (It seems that if you're going to release a window manager that can't be tailored, the least you could do is include the source.) Since most of our real applications use X, missing functionality on the X side is a serious problem for us. At a bare minimum, we'd like the X side to implement the basic L keys, as the NeWS side does. People migrating from SunView 1 are not going to accept a system where you have to go to the title bar and click in order to bring a window to the top. The XView shelltool seems both slow and primitive compared to xterm. Furthermore, an essential part of the original plan was the use of olwm to make MIT's X look compatible with XNeWS. Olwm is still at the "rough draft" stage, and I don't sense much commitment to it from Sun. Currently I'm planning to reverse my original plan. Rather than having XNeWS as the basic system and using olwm to let MIT X look compatible, I'm planning to make MIT X with twm the basic system, and expect people to run XNeWS in a mode that is reasonably compatible. That is, I'm planning to suggest that people who use XNeWS plan to use primarily the X side, with the MIT tools (e.g. xterm and twm) instead of the Sun tools (e.g. shelltool and pswm). With a small amount of tinkering, you can get twm to have its mouse and L key responses sufficiently similar to XNeWS that it isn't too bad to have windows managed by NeWS and twm on the same screen. The question we're still discussing is whether XNeWS provides enough functionality in addition to MIT's X to make it worth using at all. I think it does. We have some users who have been using NeWS 1.1 to do Postscript previewing. It looks like XNeWS is if anything better than NeWS 1.1 in this area. Also, users with graphics accelerators get much better performance from XNeWS than MIT's X. (This is supposedly fixed in X11R4, but that is still too buggy for widespread use.) I have to say that as a NeWS proponent, I feel Sun isn't giving me much help. NeWS has been around an awfully long time to still be at the rough draft stage. Meanwhile, X has turned into quite a nice system. I suspect that it's going to be another year before XNeWS is really ready for widespread use, and by then all of our users will have migrated to pure X. I find it hard to believe that we're the only site in this situation. I'm worried that NeWS has missed its launch window. (I also have this feeling that after all the dust settles in the shootout between the highly-publicized user interface standards, the real winner is going to turn out to be the X stuff produced by the hacker community. I find myself increasingly pleased with twm.)
montnaro@spyder.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) (02/16/90)
Charles Hedrick writes concerning XNeWS problems. I have a couple of comments on the XNeWS situation. The olwm/pswm interface appears (unfortunately) to be stable as far as Sun is concerned. During XNeWS beta testing I complained about the lack of function key support, but was told it was an OpenLook design issue. (NeWS1.1 supported function keys, and you could do it in PostScript if you like.) Sun likes to tout how OpenLook is standard, and was designed by human factors types. As far as I'm concerned, nobody has had enough experience with good user interfaces to sit down and write a (horribly large, hard-to-read) spec from which a window manager with a "good" look-and-feel will be created. I'm convinced you still have to experiment with most user interfaces to get them right. As a simple example, consider Don Hopkins' recent tabframes posting. An extra goody added in tabframes is the edge-stretch thingies in the window borders. You can now stretch one edge easily, without inadvertently stretching the other edge connected to your corner-stretch thingie. Why did the OpenLook designers never think of this? SunView had that basic capability, albeit without visible window gadgetry. It wasn't like the idea was completely unheard of. I agree that running the XNeWS server with an alternate window manager is a viable option. Before I got my SPARCStation I used XNeWS in X11ONLY mode with gwm, which was the only ICCCM-compliant window manager I had available to me at the time. If you choose to use twm with XNeWS, I recommend you at least try the X11R4 version. Cmdtool/shelltool both stink under XNeWS. Use the version of xterm that Sun placed in the demo subdirectory of $OPENWINHOME. (The MIT version, as of X11R3, didn't work properly with XNeWS.) There's no particular benefit to Sun's terminal emulators unless you're a textedit freak. Xterm is faster, has scrollbars, and VT100 and Tek 4010 emulation (for those rare occasions that it's needed). Sun has steadfastly maintained that the current XNeWS release is a "developers" release. Those people here who use it find it relatively stable at this point. On a SPARCStation with enough memory (16MBytes+) and a GX frame buffer it's really very pleasant to use, except for the OpenLook warts on pswm. Whether or not you want to release it to garden-variety users is another question, however. The server itself appears to be fine at this point. XNeWS does give you SunView executable compatibility, which I use frequently. While your SunView users may balk at the the user interface, they will be able to run old SunView programs in "compatibility mode". It's not perfect, but it works. (If you run in X11ONLY mode - which saves a lot of memory - you must manually set the WINDOW_PARENT and WMGR_ENV_PLACEHOLDER environment variables, typically to /dev/win0 and /dev/win1, respectively.) -- Skip (montanaro@crdgw1.ge.com)
gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (02/19/90)
Anyone who would read comp.windows.news [or get news-makers] is a
friend, and friends of NeWS may as well know the truth.
Grasshopper Group is not using xnews for much of anything. In fact we
see NeWS as a lose at this point. Technically the idea was great.
Politically and organizationally Sun dropped the ball so many times
that even if they fixed all the problems tomorrow, nobody would (or
should) believe them. Both inside and outside Sun, the NeWS team is
disintegrating. David LaVallee is working at NeXT (where they seem to
care about PostScript based windowing). Robin Schaufler is leaving
Friday for a job at SGI. Don Hopkins is finally going to graduate and
wants to do some real work that will get used -- that is, not using
Sun's bastard stepchild. Josh Siegel is learning about X and going
back to school. Grasshopper has released our office space and Hugh
Daniel, Keith Henson and I are working on other things.
We are thinking of holding a wake for NeWS in our ex-offices a few days
before we have to be out.
X might be rasterop on wheels, but at least it has wheels.
--
John Gilmore {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com
Just say *yes* to drugs. If someone offers you a drug war, just say no.