[comp.windows.open-look] Open Look *and* OSF/Motif? Why bother...

tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray) (02/25/91)

nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes:
 This stuff about being able to do two GUIs is nonsense.  Not because
 it isn't possible.  Not because it isn't easy.  But simply because
 WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO IT!  It's a waste of time, resources and it
 hurts the industry.

And, speaking from my developer's soapbox, let me say:

 RIGHT ON!

The Macintosh sold millions of boxes despite its lack of horsepower,
toy operating system, laughable keyboard/screen/mouse, poor application
robustness, and difficulty-of-programming features, for one reason:

 A single look & feel that was Good Enough.

Consider the potential benefit to the world if a SINGLE look and feel that is
Good Enough gets stuck on the front of Unix, an OS that is Pretty Good,
running on most of the hardware that is Pretty Good.  I don't give a flying
#$%)@!# which L&F wins, as long as *one* of them dies quickly and gracefully.
Then we can get together and bury DOS, OS/2, SAA, and the Macintosh (with some
regrets in the latter case).

Motif, you're Good Enough.  You too, Open Look.  Now will one of you please
bugger off and die.

Thanks, Tim Bray, Open Text Systems

amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) (02/26/91)

tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray) writes:

>I don't give a flying #$%)@!# which L&F wins, as long as *one* of
>them dies quickly and gracefully.  Then we can get together and bury
>DOS, OS/2, SAA, and the Macintosh (with some regrets in the latter
>case).

I go even further--I don't even care if *any* of them "wins."  This
isn't a football game (although sometimes I wonder :)).  All I want to
do is (a) sell software, and (b) use software, without having to worry
about "look and feel" differences.  For that matter, I don't even want
to have to worry about OS differences, or hardware differences.  A
workstation is just a set of resources.  It's some input devices, some
output devices, some storage, and some computing power.  Period.  All
the rest of it is simply a means for the software I use to gain the
use of those resources.  As long as it can, I don't care how it does
it.  As an application developer, I should care either...

>Motif, you're Good Enough.  You too, Open Look.  Now will one of you please
>bugger off and die.

I suspect they both will, eventually.  This industry is still very young.
-- 
Amanda Walker						      amanda@visix.com
Visix Software Inc.					...!uunet!visix!amanda
--
"Trust in Allah, but tie your camel."	--Arabic proverb

karln@uunet.uu.net (03/01/91)

Re: will either open-look or motif bugger-off and die ...


Our Suns run both. I have open-look running and then I fire up Ingres - 4GL

which is based on motif, so I am told. No major problems, other than having
to know the differences. If I want to run under motif my X11-stuff will still work anyway.

 was told that I can run my xview stuff while under motif ...

all one really needs is an X11 server, which is a standard ... any I see no problem


karln!karln@uunet.uu.net