greg@gergle.UUCP (12/03/88)
>Has anyone heard any (even slightly) reliable rumors about NeWS being >ported to the NeXT cube? Who would want it? When you can have the real thing (PostScript), an excellent toolkit, integrated printing, etc.. About the only I can think of, is some weird application which requires round windows. -greg.
dwf%prudence@LANL.GOV (David W. Forslund) (12/09/88)
>>Has anyone heard any (even slightly) reliable rumors about NeWS being >>ported to the NeXT cube? >Who would want it? When you can have the real thing (PostScript), an >excellent toolkit, integrated printing, etc.. > >About the only I can think of, is some weird application which requires >round windows. > > -greg. > That presumes that no-one has written any interesting applications in NeWS or perhaps equivalently that the only interesting ones are in Display PostScript. The sad fact now is that we have two parallel (incompatible) extensions to "PostScript" which is only going to make life hard on the programming community. It would appear that despite some bugs that NeWS is considerably more mature, powerful, and accepted than is Display PostScript at this time. So it seems to me that an implementation on the NeXT machine would interest a number of people who might like to integrate the machine into an existing environment of many other workstations. Dave Forslund
bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (12/10/88)
In article <8811281959.AA21313@frame.com> greg@gergle.UUCP writes: >Who would want it [NeWS on NeXT]?... About the only I can think of, >is some weird application which requires round windows. I don't have any serious application (yet) that specifically requires round windows, unless you count piemenus. But I want that generality when I need it.
chac@aratar.UUCP (Chuck Clanton) (12/14/88)
In article <8812040436.AA02855@prudence.lanl.gov> dwf%prudence@LANL.GOV (David W. Forslund) writes: >That presumes that no-one has written any interesting applications in >NeWS or perhaps equivalently that the only interesting ones are in >Display PostScript. This discussion seems to miss at least some of the distinction between the two as I understand it. NeWS is a programmable windowing system using a postscript-like language. Display Postscript provides a way to put postscript output on a screen. Display Postscript does not have the primitives for building a windowing system. They presumably overlap considerably on the output side, but not on the input side. And, even on the output side, DP is likely to be missing capabilities needed for building a screen server. I have never used DP so perhaps this is wrong?
greg@gergle.UUCP (12/14/88)
>That presumes that no-one has written any interesting applications in >NeWS or perhaps equivalently that the only interesting ones are in >Display PostScript. I have seen very few NeWS applications in the commercial marketplace. NeWS and Display PostScript are not comparable. Without the NeXT extensions for event handling, window creation etc.., Display PostScript is not a window system. >The sad fact now is that we have two parallel >(incompatible) extensions to "PostScript" which is only going to make >life hard on the programming community. Yes this is unfortunate, but alot of code can be reused between applications. For instance *.cps files can be 90% converted to pswrap files with just a sed script. (Maybe a 100%, I'm not very good with sed) >It would appear that despite >some bugs that NeWS is considerably more mature, powerful, and >accepted than is Display PostScript at this time. I disagree with the more mature & powerfull statement. NeWS with all the bugs fixed would still not match DPS with NeXT Extensions. The fonts are not finished, thick line stroking is slow, and interfacing to C applications is alot of work. Most applications ported from SunView are used to an event data structure complete with shift & meta masks. Getting this information in NeWS is alot of work. You need to write alot of PostScript and alot of glue between C and PostScript. In DPSNE, you simply send a getnextevent message to your Application object, and you get back a C event data structure. One line of code. NeWS has been out a long time, and there still isn't a powerfull C library. DPSNE on the other hand not only has complete toolkit in Objective C, but it is totally integrated into the Gnu Debugger, and has a program to help build applications. Even if you are doing a big port, the application builder is great for dumping code examples into Objective C. Now that was only if the bugs were fixed. How can you recommend a product from a company which does not fix major bugs in a timely fashion. I have ported a very large application which makes extensive use of fonts to both NeWS and DPSNE and platforms. The NeWS port was absolute pain. Changing the encoding vector crashes the server, screen metrics don't work with a flipped y in the transformation matrix. These are the type of bugs which jeapordize serious applications. The prerelease DPSNE stuff also had alot of bugs, but every bug that I have reported, has been fixed. >So it seems to me >that an implementation on the NeXT machine would interest a number of >people who might like to integrate the machine into an existing >environment of many other workstations. Possibly, but things may just end up being the other way around. (All things being equal on source code availability) -greg.
dwf%beta@LANL.GOV (Dave Forslund) (12/14/88)
Does the availability of NeWS source code and lack thereof for DPS (except for a certain subset) affect your views on porting and availability on a variety of machines. NeWS is available on a number of other vendors hardware. Will DPS be as quickly ported because of the lack of availability of complete source? David Forslund Los Alamos National Laboratory (dwf@lanl.gov)
haberman@S1.MSI.UMN.EDU ("Joe Habermann") (12/14/88)
>Does the availability of NeWS source code...
I didn't know NeWS source was available. From Sun, heh? How much
do they charge? I suppose I _could_ just go ask my sales rep.
+Joe Habermann
haberman@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu ..!rutgers!umn-cs!habermanroger@tachyon.UUCP (Roger Cordes) (12/16/88)
> >So it seems to me that an implementation on the NeXT machine would interest > >a number of people who might like to integrate the machine into an existing > >environment of many other workstations. > Possibly, but things may just end up being the other way around. > (All things being equal on source code availability) Excuse me, but what does that mean? Which other way around? And what about the networked server support issue?