[comp.windows.news] AT&T's OPEN LOOK on Sun ?

mike@ists.ists.ca (Mike Clarkson) (05/20/89)

In article <492@cui.unige.ch>, appel@cui.unige.ch (Ron Appel) writes:
> Has anybody tried to use AT&T's OPEN LOOK GUI on Sun's? I mean, has anybody
> tried part of the OPEN LOOK GUI, in particular the toolkits? What are
> your experiences? What is working and what is not working?

I've had a chance to demo a Beta copy of the merged X11/News server with
the Open Look interface etc., etc.  *This was a beta-1 version*, but...
if they're going to make a July shipment date, there's a lot of midnight
oil that will have to be burned ripping the bugs out of this piece of
software.  I have no comments about the interface in particular but
I do hope that Sun doesn't plan us to finish beta testing for them the
way they did SunOS4.0.

> Will the toolkit be usable under Sunview2? Any other part of AT&T's
> OPEN LOOK?

The SunView interface  will be the same running on X or Sunview.

Mike.



-- 
Mike Clarkson					mike@ists.ists.ca
Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science	uunet!attcan!ists!mike
York University, North York, Ontario,		FORTRAN - just say no. 
CANADA M3J 1P3					+1 (416) 736-5611

don@BRILLIG.UMD.EDU (Don Hopkins) (05/21/89)

   Date: Sat, 20 May 89 16:26:08 EDT
   From: mailrus!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!yunexus!ists!mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov  (Mike Clarkson)

   In article <492@cui.unige.ch>, appel@cui.unige.ch (Ron Appel) writes:
   > Has anybody tried to use AT&T's OPEN LOOK GUI on Sun's? I mean, has
   > anybody tried part of the OPEN LOOK GUI, in particular the toolkits?
   > What are your experiences? What is working and what is not working?
   I've had a chance to demo a Beta copy of the merged X11/News server with
   the Open Look interface etc., etc.  *This was a beta-1 version*, but...
   if they're going to make a July shipment date, there's a lot of midnight
   oil that will have to be burned ripping the bugs out of this piece of
   software.

   -- 
   Mike Clarkson					mike@ists.ists.ca
   Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science	uunet!attcan!ists!mike
   York University, North York, Ontario,		FORTRAN - just say no. 
   CANADA M3J 1P3					+1 (416) 736-5611

A whole lot of midnight oil *is* being burnt. I've been busy testing out all
the programs I can find in X11/NeWS, and writing down the problems I've
encountered, and trying to fix the bugs. All in all, I am amazed at how solid
X11/NeWS is. The most noticible things that are missing from X11/NeWS are a
whole bunch of NeWS 1.1 bugs and limitations!  Of course there are bugs in a
beta version, but X11/NeWS is some high quality software, and there is a lot
of work going into making it better.  Stop by the OVTA booth at Baltimore 
Usenix and see for yourself!

There have been many many improvements to NeWS, and the object oriented
PostScript based NDE toolkit kit is absolutely fantastic! The Folio outline
fonts look very nice, even rotated and at small point sizes! The X server is
fast, even in color! NeWS functions as the X window manager, which is
implemented in object oriented PostScript, on top of NDE.  You can wrap your
X windows in OPEN LOOK frames, or whatever class of window frame you've set
as the default!

I just rolled my own window frames by defining a subclass of OpenLookFrame,
called TabFrame.  It was a real pleasure -- NDE was designed to make
subclassing easy (as opposed to the old Lite toolkit, which was retrofitted
"packages"). I can set the default frame class to TabFrame, and I get them
around all my X and NDE windows!  Instead of having a thick border for the
window title at the top of the frame, it has an index tab just big enough for
the title and frame controls (the deposed shein mark, push pin, etc), that
sticks out from the edge of the window (like an address book, but wider, and
they can be along any edge, and they don't break off). You can make a pile of
these windows with their tabs sticking out in different places, showing all
the window titles, and grab any window by its title tab and drag it around,
and click on a tab to make the window come to the top of the pile, and drag
the tab around the window's edges so it sticks out where you can see it.
This is great if you need to have a whole bunch of windows open at once, or
if you're an xterm junkie who just likes to show up in the rwho listing more
often than anybody else. ;-)

	-Don

mike@ists.ists.ca (Mike Clarkson) (05/24/89)

In article <388@ists.ists.ca>, mike@ists.ists.ca (that's me) wrote:
> I've had a chance to demo a Beta copy of the merged X11/News server with
> the Open Look interface etc., etc.  *This was a beta-1 version*, but...

I have since learned that I was demoing a beta version of X11/NeWS running
on an Alpha version of the GX graphics processor hardware.  I have
had a number of comments back from people who have much more experience
with the beta-version than myself, and who have all been favourably
impressed by the speed and reliability of the X11/NeWS merge.

I apologize to the list for the misinformation, and to Sun for my
implicit slander.  I look forward to July to seeing the "real thing".

Mike.



-- 
Mike Clarkson					mike@ists.ists.ca
Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science	uunet!attcan!ists!mike
York University, North York, Ontario,		FORTRAN - just say no. 
CANADA M3J 1P3					+1 (416) 736-5611