Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!uunet!mcvax!unido!pcsbst!jkh
From: jkh@pcsbst.UUCP (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: HP WIDGETS AVAILABLE NOW
Message-ID: <356@pcsbst.UUCP>
Date: 24 Sep 88 16:54:00 GMT
References: <100920007@hpcvlx.HP.COM>
Reply-To: pcsbst!jkh@pcsbst.UUCP (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Organization: PCS GmbH, Pfaelzer-Wald-Str. 36, 8000 Muenchen; West-Germany
Lines: 30


I'd be interested in hearing from people about their experiences with
this package. My first impression of the HP widgets (on the beta R3 tape)
has not been favorable. For one, the pulldown menus have been removed with
a dull instrument, leaving several references still around that will bomb
until you remove them. The applications I did get to compile are rather
uh.. interesting. Upon being initially brought up (with or without a window
manager running), their windows begin resizing rapidly as the various
widgets duke it out for space. Geometry management is very strange, to say
the least. Widgets also tend to highlight at odd times, and not consistantly
at that (sometimes they will, sometimes they won't). The valuator "thumbs"
do not always come up the same size. Sometimes they are rectangular, sometimes
square. The "pane" widgets (I don't know what HP calls them) are difficult
to use and often like to move in the direction opposite to that being
dragged; I still haven't figure them out.

On the plus side, the scrollbars look nicer. Little arrows and whatnot.
Scrolling text widgets are faster and have a better "feel", though one is
advised not to play with them too long as they get confused and start
displaying only pieces of characters.

On the whole, this is a rather surprising release from HP. Considering the
track record they have for caution, I have to assume that the beta
was almost forcibly extracted from the engineers in charge. I'd be
interested in how many changes are planned [by HP] between now and
the official R3 release. Anyone from HP listening who cares to comment?

					Jordan Hubbard
					PCS Computer Systeme GmbH
					uunet!unido!pcsbst!jkh