Uniforum reports

[pcinews!observer at cs.utexas.edu]

The following is my first impressions of Sun's Feb. 28 press breakfast
here at Uniforum in San Francisco. Because I've used stories (with
permission) from SunSpots before, I believe it right I repay the favor.
Feel free to add this to an upcoming issue.

Mark Cappel
The Sun Observer

(Feb 28) -- Sun Microsystems executives here in San Francisco at Uniforum
89 said the company will soon start shipping a product called
"OpenWindows," a graphical interface application environment that combines
Open Look and X11.

According to Sun, OpenWindows includes AT&T's Open Look, Sun's X11/NeWS,
and Sun's XView toolkit, the "second generation" of the SunView toolkit.

Scott McNealy and Carl Wolf, VP of Sun's Software Products division, made
several references to the alleged 2,100 applications available now on
SunView, and how they can, in an afternoon or less, port their
applications to OpenWindows.

Sun demonstrated OpenWindows on its three product lines, a 680x0-based
3/60, a SPARC-based Sun-4, and a 80386-based 386i, as well as a DEC
workstation.

In a shrewd move, Sun will be donating the XView toolkit to MIT for
release in its X source code tape.

Sun said the OpenWindows Application Environment is built on the following
model:

[Please bear with me, I did this on a small-screen laptop.]

Graphical-----------------Specification
User     l  Open Look    l AT&T and Sun
Interface----------------

         ----------------- 
XToolkit l   XView       l MIT
         -----------------

Window   ----------------- Sun &
System   l  X11/NeWS     l AT&T SV.4
Platform -----------------

Sun said OpenWindows' specifications are available now for "the
reproduction cost of the documentation," while a limited number of
software copies are also presently available. Full release is scheduled
for July.

Sun execs also mentioned that it is working with Toshiba, Fujitsu and
Xerox Japan to develop a Kanji version of OpenWindows.

In the quotes department, Scott McNealy apologized for the new name of its
product, "OpenWindows", because of the word 'open.' He said 'open' is
becoming overused, much like 'lite' and 'plus.' Not to be out done, Bill
Joy later cause OSF's Motif interface a knock-off of PM, and that Sun
never wanted NeWS/ OpenWindows to be as good as the Finder or any other
interface, Sun wanted it to be better.

             # #

(Feb 28) -- Sun showed today here at Uniforum 89 three new low-end
personal productivity applications for users of 3, 4 and 386i Sun
workstations. Dubbed SunWrite, SunPaint and SunDraw, the applications are
based on Open Look, and are immediately available for Sun-3s, and are
expected to be available for 386i's and 4's "in a month.".

In its booth on the Uniforum display floor, Sun showed the Macintosh-like
applications to curious attendees who spilled out of Sun's booth and
clogged walkways. The applications share a common clipboard, have
consistant Open Look user interfaces, and seemed quite easy-to-use and
friendly from your humble narrator's Macintosh-user perspective. The
products are based on "core technology" from Island Graphics, a San
Rafael, CA firm.

Write, listing for $695, allows multiple columns of text, various fonts
from 4 to 72 points, style sheets, leading and kerning control, a
Merriam-Webster dictionary, and automatic text flow around imported
SunPaint, SunDraw and EPSF objects. Sun executives said third parties are
developing filters to allow importing and exporting of SunWrite files to
and from popular PC and Unix word processors.

SunPaint, $495, appears to be a clone of Apple's original MacPaint. As a
raster editor, it can edit scanned images.

SunDraw, $495, appears to have most of MacDraw's functions, plus the
ability to edit text that has been rotated. Draw is an object-oriented
graphics tool.

All three can be purchased for $995.

Scott McNealy said Sun is releasing these products primarily because it
drives him crazy to go into a customer site and see a Mac or PC sitting on
a desk next to a Sun. The users need the Macs or PCs because Suns don't
have simple word processing or graphics applications, the story goes.

The company stressed it was not getting into applications development and
sales in a big way, it merely needed to establish a basic software need it
perceived as unfilled.

             # #

The above are the on-the-spot perceptions of Mark Cappel, editor of The Sun 
Observer. (c) 1989 Publications & Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

Mark Cappel
The Sun Observer
cs.utexas.edu!pcinews!observer