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Date:      Tue, 27 Feb 1996 10:00:45 +0530
From:      A JOSEPH KOSHY <koshy@india.hp.com>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        Sean Kelly <kelly@yarmouth>, kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de, narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Win32 (was:Re: Go SCSI! Big improvement...) 
Message-ID:  <199602270430.AA068575446@fakir.india.hp.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 26 Feb 1996 10:06:47 PST." <5097.825358007@time.cdrom.com> 

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In message <5097.825358007@time.cdrom.com> "Jordan K. Hubbard" writes

jkh> FWIW, my opinion of Tk (in pretty much all its various versions in
jkh> whatever colors) is that it's the finest GUI development environment
jkh> currently available for $0, period.

I'm inclined to agree.

jkh> [canvas] object is an amazing little hack just in and of itself, ...

Its text widget is supposed to be fast and efficient too.

jkh> pkg_* tools would definitely be my first clients for such a library,
jkh> seeing as I've already been forced to do this myself just to bootstrap
jkh> my own efforts.

Excellent idea.  Having a consistent UI for system admin tasks certainly adds 
a certain `polish' to the feel of the OS.  This is also what reviewers in 
the trade rags pick on for some unfathomable reason when judging the quality
of an OS :).

A couple of points:

* SCO had a product called Visual Tcl which they used for system admin scripts. 
  From what I know, they had appropriate `back end' programs that would use the 
  appropriate user interface (X, CUI) to interact with the user from the script.

* On similar? lines Ousterhout was working on Tk5 which was to be more or less
  GUI technology independent (the plan was get Win/Motif/etc look and feel
  from the same Tk script).

* Tk does have a GUI based (drag-n-drop) application builder.  Its called
  XF; however I've not used it myself so I can't comment on its utility.

Some opinions:

I'm not a fan of the Windows look and feel and I don't care if the Windows is 
already on a gazillion PCs and is some kind of market leader; if that had been 
enough I would be running Microsoft not FreeBSD.  I believe people prefer 
FreeBSD on the grounds of its excellence in technology.  We already have better 
user interface technology than Win[0-9]*, I think we need to take this further.
Using Win32 clones as a base may be a mistake IMO when we already have superior
alternatives.

Koshy



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