hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (07/24/88)
In response to a couple of questions about SunView 2.0: At the Usenix about a month ago there was public evening presentation by the Sun staff people working on their window systems. They said that SunView 2.0 would be done on top of X "if possible". They said if possible because they were worried that they would find at the last minute that there was some critical thing that couldn't be done reasonably in X and had to use NeWS. However the manager said that he had a very strong desire to do the whole thing in X, and thought he could do so. I don't recall anyone asking specifically "What about previous statements that SunView would be done in NeWS?" but from what was said, it sounds like plans have changed. No solid dates were given, but one gets the impression of the merged X/NeWS server and SunView 2.0 in the late fall, with possible slippage into the beginning of 89, and the final NeWS development environment sometime in early 89 with possible slippage to late 89. So it looks like there's a good chance that Sun will release a solid X before they release a solid NeWS. (I use NeWS 1.1 now and prefer it in many ways to SunView and X, but until there is a terminal emulator equivalent in performance and reliability to the SunView or X one, NeWS can hardly be said to be solid.)