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To: Andrew Kenneth Milton <akm@mother.sneaker.net.au>
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        nectar@NECTAR.COM, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Out of Box experience (Was: Re: How is selection made of what goes into CDrom?) 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 01 Dec 1997 18:00:19 +1100."
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Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 18:28:36 +1030
From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
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> 
> Does graphical necessarily have to be X ? I know that a console gui
> based one means it probably can't run under X easily (or can you?).
> That'll make remote sysinstalls a pain if you can't.

For a graphical interface to be worth the effort, it has to be 
portable.  (ie. network/interface transparent).  That means either X 
(but that limits you to X-capable machines as clients), Tcl/Tk (but 
that may require some fancy setup work on the client system), or HTML 
(security is browsers is a critical issue).

We've been down this road already.  HTML will work if/when someone can 
get the security stuff resolved, and we suddenly discover half a dozen 
really great graphic artists that just happen to work well together. 8)

> Don't forget there's also a curses version of Tk which does a fair
> job. The SCO (boo hiss) system tool works this way, if you run it from
> a console it uses the curses version, otherwise you get the pretty
> X one. So your development of a dual-mode sysinstall using Tk would
> (almost) fall out for free.

... only Visual Tcl (the tool you are thinking of) is proprietary and 
not available.  I think that Karl L. and friends spent a long time on 
vtcl for a *very* good reason.  We don't have those resources.

imke