mo@maximo.UUCP (Mike O'Dell) (07/01/88)
Maybe it's because of the bugs. (grin)
dm@DIAMOND.BBN.COM ("Dave Mankins") (07/01/88)
>Maybe it's because of the bugs. (grin)
More likely it's because of the price.mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau) (07/02/88)
In comp.windows.news, dm@DIAMOND.BBN.COM ("Dave Mankins") writes: >>Maybe it's because of the bugs. (grin) >More likely it's because of the price. Even more likely, it's because of the politics that prevent other vendors from supplying NeWS ports for their machines. The $100 fee for NeWS binaries doesn't seem like a big impediment to anyone who wants to run it on a Sun. Of course, you don't get sources, but then again you don't tend to NEED sources to get NeWS working, unlike certain other window systems we could name :-) -- Matt Landau Riding shotgun down the avalanche mlandau@bbn.com
bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (07/02/88)
>In comp.windows.news, dm@DIAMOND.BBN.COM ("Dave Mankins") writes: >>>Maybe it's because of the bugs. (grin) >>More likely it's because of the price. > >Even more likely, it's because of the politics that prevent other >vendors from supplying NeWS ports for their machines. > >The $100 fee for NeWS binaries doesn't seem like a big impediment >to anyone who wants to run it on a Sun. Of course, you don't get >sources, but then again you don't tend to NEED sources to get >NeWS working, unlike certain other window systems we could name :-) >-- > Matt Landau Riding shotgun down the avalanche To some extent it's a bootstrap problem (at least as viewed from here, where we don't have any NeWS yet.) Ok, it's $100/copy (RTU is cheaper but manuals are nice which seems to be a lot of what that $100 is for.) We have 100 or so workstations, that's $10K, well, we don't need it for nearly that many at this point, how many do we need it for? Hmm, well, I guess developers around here, people who want to have an opinion as it comes onto the scene, like myself, to advise the others here. Well, lessee, a dozen copies might do it, $1200, that's probably how many people might be using X around here right now from time to time, maybe a few less would do it. Not a whole lot of money really, but hardly free. But it *is* beta software, and I think it's supposed to show up magically bundled anyhow "real soon now" (remember that the "real soon now" was originally something like last April and has been slipping, seemed like we might as well wait, the beta stuff sounded pretty buggy, and people running 1.0 said wait for 1.1, and I don't remember any real announcement of that, I did see some mention on the net so I sort of knew it must be ready, but "real soon now...") And besides, we FTP'd over X and got it running and that was all rather painless, how many window systems do I want to play with at once? Ach, play with X now, wait for NeWS, it's coming it's coming. And it's not like there are applications out there crying for NeWS (eg. things like Frame), there's no noise I've heard from our users (as a matter of fact I have no idea off-hand what is available with NeWS other than the environment and a terminal emulator, am I missing something? How would I know? I haven't seen any literature really and I haven't noticed lots of sources being posted here to things I just *must* have, or reference to the same, that's part of the bootstrap problem I guess, if everyone's waiting for some critical threshold of applications to appear then they're [we're] not writing them.) My 2c: if they had thrown the beta Sun stuff (binary is probably fine) somewhere to anonymous FTP with some on-line supporting docs (or even just sent the salesthings around with some hardcopies of core docs to hand out to people they thought should be playing with it at this stage, or even charged a few bucks) more people would probably be playing with it. Right now it sort of sits in the well of this energy threshold, wondering if tomorrow's mailbox will just sort of have a tape of it sitting there, and I'm trying to figure out the Widgets library and putting up CLX and trying to get it to do something, maybe with PCL, and porting the X software to things like Encores and... -Barry Shein, Boston University
lerici@super.ORG (Peter W. Brewer) (07/02/88)
>>Maybe it's because of the bugs. (grin) >More likely it's because of the price. And the number of systems on which it runs. (ugh even VMS)
tomlin@hc.DSPO.GOV (Bob Tomlinson) (07/02/88)
in article <23581@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) says: > ... > ... Lots of stuff about NeWS cost on 10-100 workstations. > ... > Right now it sort of sits in the well of this energy threshold, > wondering if tomorrow's mailbox will just sort of have a tape of it > sitting there, and I'm trying to figure out the Widgets library and > putting up CLX and trying to get it to do something, maybe with PCL, > and porting the X software to things like Encores and... Meanwhile the NeWS client side is trivially portable to Encores (as well as MIPS, Alliant, etc.) and is actually being used in large distributed applications that would *kill* a network if the applications were using X. Free ain't always everything. I wonder how much of a difference there is in actual cost when you consider you get ~$60 of manuals (not to mention the tape) for your $100 NeWS license fee. Nutshell sells their X manuals documenting X's hundreds of calls and thousands of arguments for $60. Pretty similar prices. NeWS right to use licenses are $25 (that's $2,500 for your 100 workstations). Isn't that about the price of 1 compiler for a VMS 11/780 for 1 year? My haven't times changed. -- bob -- Bob Tomlinson -- tomlin@hc.dspo.gov -- (505) 667-8495 Los Alamos National Laboratory -- MEE-10/Data Systems
benoni@ssc-vax.UUCP (Charles L Ditzel) (07/05/88)
in article <11199@jade.BBN.COM>, mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau) says: ... > Even more likely, it's because of the politics that prevent other > vendors from supplying NeWS ports for their machines. > > The $100 fee for NeWS binaries doesn't seem like a big impediment > to anyone who wants to run it on a Sun. Of course, you don't get > sources, but then again you don't tend to NEED sources to get > NeWS working, unlike certain other window systems we could name :-) I tend to agree...certain other workstation vendors are probably not interested in following behind Sun...interestingly by not having a NeWS port they are stuck with X...and they wind up still following Sun who has will have X/NeWS... having shown NeWS to some folks that have been using X on an RT they are off looking at Suns...(because of NeWS) ---------------- Naturally my opinions are my own.
lkb@theceg.UUCP (Lawrence Keith Blische) (07/05/88)
From article <8807011518.AA07601@metropolis.super.org>, by lerici@super.ORG (Peter W. Brewer): > > >>>Maybe it's because of the bugs. (grin) > >>More likely it's because of the price. > > And the number of systems on which it runs. (ugh even VMS) Just what systems/hardware are supported? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Larry Blische ...!cp1!sarin\ The Computer Engineering Group, Inc. !wb3ffv!theceg!lkb +1 301 282 5876 (9-5 ET) ...!aplcen/
dm@DIAMOND.BBN.COM ("Dave Mankins") (07/08/88)
> [talk about how the $100 fee for News binaries is a tiny
impediment.]
A couple of years ago (post News, although at the time it was
still called Sundew) I worked for a company that builds a
large-scale parallel processor which does not run SUN binaries,
and at the time didn't even run UNIX. For the price of a few
hours spent running FTP, and a couple of days spent debugging
my Berkeley socket emulation library, we had X up and running
on this machine. We were able to show our management that X on
this machine was a reasonably good thing, and they agreed, and
a little while later it was a part of our product line (it
helps that we liked to distribute sources with our products).
(It was this easy because our machine is a computer, not a
workstation, so I didn't have to port the display portion,
which is more hardware-dependent.)
What would it take to talk my boss-beings into springing for
the $40K source license, signing a semi-restrictive agreement
with what was, more or less, a competitor, just to do an
EVALUATION? Especially when that $40K could immediately be
applied to buying workstations to make our programmers more
productive? I'm not flaming SUN, I think that if you do good
work, you're entitled to ask money for it, if you so choose.
However, I think that in order for something to become a
standard, you have to be pretty loose with the sources, so people
can port it to their machine without spending more time talking
to the company's lawyers than they spend doing the port.
I hate talking to lawyers. Even believing that Sundew was a
superior paradigm, X was preferable, because we could spend the
News source license fee putting Sun 3/50s on 10 of the
department's desks immediately instead of a year later. It would
be a LONG time before the value-added of News over X came any
where close to the value-added of those 10 workstation-years.
News ain't ever likely to run on that machine, because:
o they've got a ``pretty good'' window system now, one that
interoperates with all our other workstation and CPU vendors
--- we can even put PCs on the net running X
o since they've got X, they no longer pay much attention to
yet another window system from SUN, so they don't know
what they're missing
o the above two reasons have to be overcome to justify the
expense of a source license (which they need to port the
software to their multiprocessors and their vaxen)
I'm sure that they're not the only hardware vendor in a similar
fix. The News BINARY license is comparable to the expense of
getting the X SOURCE tape, if you're on the internet, X is FREE.
The value-added of News over X isn't immediately obvious, so
why spend all that money on a gamble (at the time Sundew first
came out, it was Suns THIRD incompatible window system. Who
could predict that there wouldn't be a fourth)? The first
they're likely to see of News will be after the X/News combined
server comes out, so they can run their existing software on it.
X is like a weed, it can germinate and spread to your machine
without much attention on your part. With News you have to spend
$40,000 in garden tools and fertilizer before you even get the
seeds.reggie@pdn.UUCP (George W. Leach) (07/08/88)
In article <8807061628.AA22039@quartz.BBN.COM>, dm@DIAMOND.BBN.COM ("Dave Mankins") writes: > X is like a weed, it can germinate and spread to your machine > without much attention on your part. With News you have to spend > $40,000 in garden tools and fertilizer before you even get the > seeds. Yes, but a weed can also grow out of control. Withness all the toolkits out there. There needs to be some consensus on A toolkit in order to make applications more portable. -- George W. Leach Paradyne Corporation ..!uunet!pdn!reggie Mail stop LF-207 Phone: (813) 530-2376 P.O. Box 2826 NOTE: codas<--->pdn will be gone soon Largo, FL 34649-2826
ronb@natmlab.dms.OZ.AU (Ron Baxter) (07/13/88)
In article <23581@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: > >And it's not like there are applications out there crying for NeWS >(eg. things like Frame), there's no noise I've heard from our users >(as a matter of fact I have no idea off-hand what is available with >NeWS other than the environment and a terminal emulator, am I missing >something? How would I know? I haven't seen any literature really and Well that really is an invitation to mention that we have a version of the AT&T S Data Analysis System running under NeWS. It has the name of Ace and the first version is out there but, of course, we are working on the second which will be a whole lot better. So what, you could say, since S is readily available under SunView -- S-Plus comes to mind. Well, since NeWS is built on PostScript it has been quite easy to make Ace generate very impressive color graphics on the screen, and equally impressive grey-scale graphics on the LaserWriter -- instead of the simple Tek-like line drawings that most S users get. So you are right, maybe it will need a bit more time before the number of applications will become noticeable, but I expect these applications will have excellent graphics capabilities because PostScript makes it possible. -- Ron Baxter, CSIRO Div Maths & Stats, PO Box 218, Lindfield, NSW, Australia. PHONE: +61 2 467 6059 ACSNET: ronb@natmlab.oz ARPA: ronb%natmlab.oz@seismo.css.gov UUCP: ....{seismo,hplabs,mcvax,ukc,nttlab}!munnari!natmlab.oz!ronb
cjc@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Chris Calabrese[rs]) (07/13/88)
In article <8807090612.AA05871@dmssyd.dms.oz>, ronb@natmlab.dms.OZ.AU.UUCP writes: > > In article <23581@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: > > > >And it's not like there are applications out there crying for NeWS > >(eg. things like Frame), there's no noise I've heard from our users > >(as a matter of fact I have no idea off-hand what is available with > >NeWS other than the environment and a terminal emulator, am I missing > >something? How would I know? I haven't seen any literature really and > > Well that really is an invitation to mention that we have a > version of the AT&T S Data Analysis System running under > NeWS. It has the name of Ace and the first version is out > there but, of course, we are working on the second which will > be a whole lot better. > > So what, you could say, since S is readily available under > SunView -- S-Plus comes to mind. Well, since NeWS is built on > PostScript it has been quite easy to make Ace generate > very impressive color graphics on the screen, and equally > impressive grey-scale graphics on the LaserWriter -- instead > of the simple Tek-like line drawings that most S users get. > > So you are right, maybe it will need a bit more time before > the number of applications will become noticeable, but I > expect these applications will have excellent graphics > capabilities because PostScript makes it possible. What, you don't have a color PostScript printer yet??? O.K. the one we have here is about $20,000, so you're off the hook. Anyway, I whole heartedly agree. The project I'm working on now is using NeWS for just these types of reasons. Quick development time. Can print anything that can be displayed on the screen. Low network bandwidth (for those who say that such things as menu synchronization eat this up, I say hog wash! Just write the _whole_ application in PostScript, and you won't have to worry about communication costs. Actually, our software is about 90% in PostScript, so it is possible, without losing performance (speed of drawing and doing large datbase searches are much bigger problems on our project than speed of interpreting the PostScript code. Don't have to take a course in computer graphics to understand it. PostScript looks messy, but it's really _clean_ and easy to understand. Plus, the imaging model is more intuitive for those of us who have studdied art, and not fundamentals of math oriented bit blitting 403 in graduate school. -- Christopher J. Calabrese AT&T Bell Laboratories ulysses!cjc
moraes@godzilla.ele.toronto.edu (Mark Moraes) (07/14/88)
In article <3678@pdn.UUCP> reggie@pdn.UUCP (George W. Leach) writes: >In article <8807061628.AA22039@quartz.BBN.COM>, dm@DIAMOND.BBN.COM ("Dave Mankins") writes: > Yes, but a weed can also grow out of control. Withness all the toolkits >out there. There needs to be some consensus on A toolkit in order to make >applications more portable. With X10, people grumbled that there weren't any standard toolkits. With X11, there are too many ... :-) There aren't too many toolkits for X - the Xt intrinsics seem to have been accepted as a standard, it seems. I like it - it offers powerful primitives. You get the Athena widgets and the HP widgets layered on top on that - use one or both sets. According to the Open Look press releases, AT&T is going to layer it on top of Xt as well. (NeWS too). Majority of the X applications seem to use Xt with Xaw. The Andrew Toolkit is pretty much a system in its own right - more like an environment. CLUE is for Lisp, InterViews is for C++. I believe HP ported Xray to X11 to provide an upgrade path for X10 Xray users. They encourage use of the HP widgets.