🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Oct3.4589.1378@dosgate> michael.livsey@canrem.com (michael livsey) writes:
>Openwindows V 3.0 uses News as its core; so does Solaris 2.0. I assume from
>this announcement that Sun is still committed to display postscript, but they
>plan to let Adobe develop the standard implementation.

NeWS is *not* Display PostScript.  NeWS is a window system based on an
implementation of PostScript whose output side is similar to, but not
exactly identical to, Adobe's implementation of PostScript for displays.

However, the PostScript langauge as implemented in NeWS has been extended
to provide an input model, complete with downloadable event handlers that
run entirely in the NeWS server, multiple lightweight threads, internal 
task switching, and a whole passel of other cool technological advances 
not found in the Display PostScript extension to X11.

Unfortunately, while NeWS was the *clear* technological winner over X11
and Display PostScript, Sun completely failed on the marketing end, and
when it was clear they were not going to "win" by fiat, lacked the vision
to simple place the NeWS sources in the public domain, or donate them to
the X11 Consortium, so that the technology could be more widely used.

>Regardless of the Adobe agreement, Sun has been sending out vibes to
>developers that people should be developing Openwindows applications using
>the OLIT package (MOTIF equivalent) not TNT or News. This may change with the
>Adobe announcement; I'm not sure which the way the wind currently blows at Sun.

NeWS is dead.  Sun has announced publicly that the next major release of
OpenWindows will be based on X11R6 and Display PostScript.  Gone are the
input extensions.  Gone are downloadable server extensions.  Gone is just
about everything that made NeWS better than vanilla X11 (a technology that
was obsolete almost before it was released).

The market has spoken, and the market has opted for wretched mediocrity.

Well, perhaps *NOW* Sun will get a corporate clue, and make the NeWS 
sources publicly available so that even as the product dies, the ideas
might live on.
--
 Matt Landau			Waiting for a flash of enlightenment
 matt@centerline.com			  in all this blood and thunder