lindahl@arrisun3.utarl.edu (Charlie S. Lindahl) (01/26/91)
Hello all. Last nite PENCOMM came to our user group (DaNG -- Dallas Area NeXT group) from the USENIX/UNIFORUM conference and demoed and spoke to the group. Short impressions: 1) It definitely WORKS! Although the version they demonstrated didn't do moving of the windows correctly (you had to go to the MOVE menu to move windows), they had all of the standard X-clients running : XEYES, XTERM, etc. 2) Speed is a little jerky (movement of windows), but acceptable. The developer did say that there was a lot of performance tweaking to do before the final release (target is "sometime in March", as I understoo it --- please contact the company for details). 3) They stated that clients did NOT have to be modified to work under their system. 4) Important point for me: they said that you CAN develop color X applications on a Grayscale NeXT, even tho you can't display them on the "native" screen. 5) Distribution currently takes 20-30Megabytes (this may change in the actual release; please double-check with the company for specifics). This includes the X man pages & X fonts, which take up the bulk of the space. 6) They have not yet put the Man pages through the Digitial Librarian; this is one of the first things I'm going to do when I get the product. They've looked at it, and said something about the "MS" macro package for NROFF generating weird stuff (I don't know MS or NROFF, so I can't comment). 7) One of the most impressive things was said when the developer was asked "How long was this in development?" The answer was "I started in October and we had a version running by the end of November". This is a tribute to the competence of their developers ... 8) They were running on a NeXTStation and a NeXT ('040) cube. 9) No NeXT color support at present, although that is definitely in their plans. 10) Price is CHEEP! Something around $250 (again, check the company directly for their pricing; I don't have their price sheet in front of me). CONGRATS to PENCOMM for doing a bang-up job! I am looking forward to the final release ... -- Charlie S. Lindahl Automation and Robotics Research Institute University of Texas at Arlington Internet EMAIL: lindahl@evax.arl.utexas.edu Standard disclaimer: Ain't no opinion but my own.