Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!mailrus!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!kimba!hvr
From: hvr%kimba@Sun.COM (Heather Rose)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: is news loosing the battle?
Message-ID: <58955@sun.uucp>
Date: 6 Jul 88 01:05:18 GMT
References: 
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: hvr@sun.UUCP (Heather Rose)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 37

In article  wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) writes:
>I have been following both the news and x news groups for a fair while
>now and lately i have noticed that there is about ten times the traffic
>in the x news group.  are there that many more people developing under
>x than news, or is the volume just skewed by all the universities on
>the net?

From what I hear from customers, NeWS is confusing at first.  Just like
C was confusing at first, just like UNIX was confusing at first.  It takes
a while to get used to programming in a stack based language (Postscript).
It takes time to understand classes.  But the benefits it provides are 
worth it to me.  Besides, I like HP calculators ;-)

>our company has a specialized cad package that we will eventually port
>to run under either news, x, or what ever becomes the standard.  it
>will be about a year before we are ready to start, so for now i am
>just watching both groups, trying to pick up all the info i can get.

Try them out.  Only you know what is best for your application.  See what
NeWS can do versus what X11 can do.  You will most likely run into
limitations with both systems, so choose the one that is most cost effective.

If you're serious about investigating these systems, take some educational
classes.  Apollo offers one on X, Sun on NeWS.  It's all well and good to
read about what others are doing, but you really won't know until you
try to get some WORK[tm] done with either system.  And, writing a CAD
package seems to be alot of WORK[tm] to me.  Another big issue to me would
seem to be 3-D support if you need it.  How do the windowing systems deal
with that?  or do you have your own, how does the windowing system
interface with your routines?  What about other medium like video?  Input
from different types of devices like drawing pads, scanners?  How is that
handled?

If you want the scoop on when products will be out etc for Sun, your local
Sun salesrep is your best bet.

--Heather Rose