Why OpenWindows instead of Motif ?

[James A. Crotinger]

halvard at solan.unit.no (Halvard Halvorsen) writes:

> Does anyone know the reason why C= went for OpenWindows ?
> I mean - this is the Sun supported GUI - while Motif

  You are correct that OpenWindows IS a Sun product, but that is not,
I believe, what the A3000UX comes with. I believe it comes with AT&T's
implementation of the OPEN LOOK GUI, which was jointly developed by
AT&T and Sun, and is a part of SVR4. I don't know what all this
includes, and I would very much like to see a posting describing it in
more detail; e.g., is there a filemgr, which is specified as part of
the OPEN LOOK GUI standard? Sun's OpenWindows product supplies this as
well as many other "deskset tools". Also, are there any plans to port
Sun's xnews? XView? All of the screen shots I've see show the "2D"
version of OPEN LOOK, not the 3D version which most people with color
(at least most Sun users around here) prefer. Hasn't AT&T gotten 3D
support into OLIT yet?

> are supported by IBM,DEC,HP etc.
> Why did C= settle for OpenWindows - or maybe they didn't ??
             ^^^^^^
                Is there an implication here that Motif would, in some
way, be better? I'll guarantee you'll get a lot of of disagreement on
that one. (Serious religious war material here, kind of like the Mac
vs. Amiga Intuition vs. Windows debate.) As for IBM, ...., using
Motif, we might as all switch back to MS-DOS as it is the clear winner
in number of installed sites. (Ack!). Just because it is most popular
don't mean it's best (as all Amigans know!).

> Does anybody know ??

  No, but I'm glad they did. I hope they'll port xnews and XView too.

> Halvard =8-)

  Jim


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James A. Crotinger   Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab // The above views 
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