From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Feb 27 06:14:31 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id GAA20665 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 27 Feb 1996 06:14:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from fieber-john.campusview.indiana.edu (Fieber-John.campusview.indiana.edu [149.159.1.34]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id GAA20655 for ; Tue, 27 Feb 1996 06:14:29 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jfieber@localhost) by fieber-john.campusview.indiana.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) id JAA04441; Tue, 27 Feb 1996 09:14:18 -0500 Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 09:14:17 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber X-Sender: jfieber@fieber-john.campusview.indiana.edu To: Jake Hamby cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Win32 (was:Re: Go SCSI! Big improvement...) In-Reply-To: <01BB042E.4636BDE0@hamby1.lightside.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 26 Feb 1996, Jake Hamby wrote: > Winsock, memory-mapped files, etc..) and features that Unix will never have > a standard for (e.g. context-sensitive hypertext help, unified printing ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Ahem, ever heard of CDE? Problems of bloatedness aside, it definately does address this. Heck, the biggest volume of the CDE manuals is about providing context-sensitive hypertext help! > system, unified TrueType font system, OLE). Now I agree that, for example, With respect to fonts, that is in the domain of X which already handles bitmap, Adobe, speedo, and I'm not aware of any technical prolems with adding truetype, but what does the application care anyway? Printing is a problem but not without a solution, namely a print server that looks like an X display. Connect to the print server, open a page sized window, draw into and it gets printed. I know of at least one (very influential) unix workstation manufacture going this direction. There will be a few extensions to handle querying the server for possible page geometries and a few other things. I vaguely recall a freely available X print server that generates postscript. I think a large factor in the dismal state of GUIs on unix is the simple fact that many unix users will put up with the most horrendous GUI without complaint. I might go so far as to say they wouldn't know a good GUI if it came up and bit them. Since a good UI is considerably harder to develop than a bad one, why invest in a good one if the users won't even notice? -john == jfieber@indiana.edu =========================================== == http://fieber-john.campusview.indiana.edu/~jfieber ============