*BSD News Article 48687


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From: duling@niehs.nih.gov (Dave Duling)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: The Future of FreeBSD...
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 95 12:57:45 GMT
Organization: ISN
Lines: 44
Message-ID: <40q6a8$pps@jeeves.niehs.nih.gov>
References: <3uktse$d9c@hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at> <3us0rg$7ph@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> <id.GFWL1.CG3@nmti.com> <3v42d4$qmb@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> <id.KGYL1._I4@nmti.com> <3vgq18$6vk@cronkite.seas.gwu.edu> <3vi3cp$j4u@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
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In article <3vi3cp$j4u@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>,
   Jon Jenkins <jenkinsj@ozy.dec.com> wrote:
>dobrien@seas.gwu.edu (David O'Brien) wrote:
>>Peter da Silva (peter@nmti.com) wrote:
>
>...snip more scathing NT remarks.
>..........
>bad points. A good GUI on top of a good
>OS (aka FreeBSD) would make it more popular
>with users. If this is desired then a quick
>easy GUI development toolset would ease the
>porting of the many existing obtuse scripts/files
>and design of new ones by allowing Mr/Mrs/Ms Average 
>user to develop GUIs without having to spend the
>next few years learning Xt/Xlib etc. The idea
>is that many hands will make light work and
>the many hands will be there IF there is
>an easy to use GUI based GUI builder.
>

Interesting thread.  It seems that BEFORE a group can decide upon a GUI
toolset, it must first decide upon a GUI !   FreeBSD (and Linux for
that matter) run generic X-windows fine, but without Motif there is no
standard for what sliders, buttons, windows... etc... look like or how
they behave.  Do you want mouse focus windows or mouse click focus windows ?
Do you want general objects for the GUI pieces or custom objects or
both ?  How will these GUI objects be distributed over the network ?  Do
you want client-server tools built into the OS+GUI or make them entirely
from libs ?  You wouldn't use a Win32 compiler to make an OS/2 program, and 
you wouldn't use an OpenLook toolkit to make a Motif program.  Well, you 
might but ...

One interesting starting point might be to look at the Caldera release.
Could that be ported to FreeBSD ?  It would certainly be nice to have
some GUI portability between the two. 

>To show you what happens when someone does
>this. Borlands Delphi is an Object based

Im writing C & C++ on Unix and NT, and frankly, I dont really care about
Delphi at this point !

- Dave Duling@niehs.nih.gov
	** Clearly not speaking for the taxpayers ... **