Re: X-terminals and SunView [SUMMARY]

From: Anthony Yen (tyen@mundo.eco.utexas.edu)
Date: Mon May 20 1991 - 13:26:42 CDT


Thanks for all the replies! I stuck my foot in my mouth it seems; it was
a _long_ week last week and I wasn't thinking when I fired off my message.
I was actually asking about XView/OpenWindows.

SUMMARY:
In short, while very well-behaved XView applications should work, the
general consensus was that it was best to start looking for X-based
equivalent applications, and not count on XView at all.

Most concise and pertinent reply came from randy@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
(Rand S. Huntzinger). It follows:

> The short answer is the SunView does not work on an X terminal. It is not
> designed to work in this environment. I'm going to make the assumption that
> you're not really asking about SunView, but Sun's newer product Open Windows
> which is an implementation of Open Look for Sun workstations. It has some
> similarity to SunView and will indeed work on an X terminal. SunView itself
> is NOT related to X11 and only works in the context of Sun's xnews server
> because Sun hacked it so the two could coexist. Even there, they do not
> coexist gracefully.
>
> Open Windows, Sun's Open Look implementation is an X package and will
> run on X terminals, but with some limitations. These include:
>
> 1. The fonts in the Sun package are incompatable with the fonts for
> other X11 servers. You'll have to use font aliases to select
> alternate fonts which are available for your X terminal. I've
> done this and it works OK.
>
> 2. The GraphOn 14 X terminal had some problems with icons under Open
> Windows with older versions of the server, but version 3.0.4 of their
> software seems to fix this. They still seem to have some minor
> problems with the file manager. However, the environment is usable.
>
> 3. The NCD X terminal works fine with Open Windows once the font package
> is handled.
>
> 4. If you're going to be running over a serial line, be especially
> careful about serial line performance. I wouldn't buy an X terminal
> for a serial until I've tried to work with it for a while to make
> sure its usable in your environment. Different vendors terminals
> may perform very differently over serial lines and across different
> kinds of applications.
>
>
> If you're going to make a "massive purchasing decision" you're probably going
> to buy enough terminals to get the vendors to lend you a demo unit for a few
> days. That way you can see for yourself.

Many thanks for replies from:

Keith.Abbey@Corp.Sun.COM (Keith Abbey - TSE)
yih%atom@cs.utah.edu (Benny Yih)
datri@lovecraft.convex.com (Anthony A. Datri)
Jeff Nieusma <nieusma@cs.Colorado.EDU>
Bryan McDonald <bigmac@erg.sri.com>
byron@archone.tamu.edu (Byron Rakitzis)
Sam Horrocks <sam@john-bigboote.ICS.UCI.EDU>
deltam!flyer!mark@uunet.UU.NET (mark galbraith)
lee@sq.com (Liam Quin)
guy@auspex.com (Guy Harris)
peterg@widget.murphy.com (Peter Gutmann)
ekrell@ulysses.att.com (Eduardo Krell)
stern@sunne.East.Sun.COM (Hal Stern - Consultant)
Simon Hackett <simon@ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
sundev!ronin!kevin@Sun.COM (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child})
Richard Evans <rde@topexpress.co.uk>
"John R. F. McMacken" <mcmacken@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca>
Gene.Saunders@West.Sun.COM (Gene Saunders)
doug@perry.berkeley.edu (Doug Neuhauser)
yamada-sun!eric@nosun.West.Sun.COM (Eric Hanchrow)
jmcrowell@ucdavis.edu (John M. Crowell)
matt@wbst845e.xerox.com (Matt Goheen)
James J Dempsey <jjd@alexander.bbn.com>
"Matt Crawford" <matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu>
edm@MDI.COM (Ed Morin)
oconnor!ronnoco!miker@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Mike Raffety)



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