From: rvenable@helix.nih.gov (Richard M. Venable)
Subject: Re: Need Some Advice..
Organization: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 09:01:43 GMT

In article <1992Nov9.192837.17737@bcars6a8.bnr.ca> djf@bnr.ca writes:
>In article <1992Nov5.201427@helix.nih.gov>, rvenable@helix.nih.gov (Richard M. Venable) writes:
>|> ...
>|> token ring, we plan to run Domain/OS as long as possible.  Frankly,
>|> NFS,
>|> ethernet, and X windows are a step backwards as far as many long time
>|> Apollo
>|> users are concerned.  
>|> 

The author of the above responds:

>Not to start a religious war or anything but, as a user of both windowing 
>systems, I'm interested in knowing what people see in Domain pads, editor,
>etc.  Sure the ability to search back through the pads was nice, but the 
>functionality exists with Xterms -  just not as gracefully.

It's that grace and simplicity that some of my cohorts are stuck on.  Myself and
several others made the transition from vt100 on a mainframe or mini directly
to Apollo workstations.  Unix was an infant, regarded as an AT&T curiousity,
and X-windows didn't exist.  Compared to using vt100 and tek4010 terminals
on VAXes and IBM 370s, though, the DM was very nice indeed.  Some things we
especially like are: (1) the ability to move the mouse cursor to a file name
in a pad and open an independent pad to view or edit the file, (2) cutting and
pasting rectangular blocks, and (3) "grabbing" blank delimited words from the
output and appending it to the end of the input buffer.  The DM editor, with
it's additional left keypad, is very intuitive and easy learn; I can't really
say the same for vi or emacs.

>Other than that though there is little I miss.  I found the window manager
>really painful for reasons too numerous to mention, but most had to do
>with how little I was able to customize it.  There seemed to be too few
>ways to do neat things that X, MWM, et al can do using resources, xset, etc.

It's that grace and simplicity notion again; there aren't as many of those
cute little clocks, mailboxes, and other Xtoys, partly because Apollo
workstations are not nearly as widespread as Unix boxes with X.  The DM is
very efficient compared to X, and is especially well suited to our code
development, scientific research, and molecular graphics environment.

>Maybe I just didn't pick up the DM tricks along the way; if so I blame it
>partly on the lack of documentation compared to O'Reilly and all the other
>authors at various levels on X.

I found the Apollo documentation, especially the on-line help, to be very
helpful in learning how to manipulate and customize the display manager; much,
much better than X and O'Reilly for the novice.  Many people have trouble
getting started with X because of it's complexity; but like any other window
system, if there's a local expert available, that helps a lot.

In spite of what I say here, I spend a good deal of my time convincing other
Apollo users to switch to one of the Unix shells, and to use Xwindows at
almost every opportunity.  I do so for most of my own work, especially when
accessing remote Unix hosts; it's crazy not to IMHO.

>So what sorts of thing could DM do that X can't?

Well, the DM could run efficiently on a node with a 60 MB disk and 2 MB of
RAM; I don't know if X could do that-- but it's really moot.  They are
different approaches to controlling the display; but X is standard, Apollo
workstations are no longer made, and the days of the Aegis shell are limited.

However, HP has a DM emulator available for the 9000 series (model 7xx at
least) principally because of people like us, who were loyal Apollo customers
but can see no particular advantage to one Unix, X windows box over another,
once the price/performance specs we want are matched.

X was only one of the things I mentioned.  Consider:

 - the token ring operates 20% faster than ethernet (12 Mb/s vs. 10 Mb/s).

 - the token ring degrades gracefully under load; no contention overload as
   with ethernet

 - one or two simple commands integrate a new node into the net; no tables
   to maintain; ALL volumes accessible to all nodes on the token ring
   (privileges permitting, of course)

 - little delay in accessing volumes on the token ring net; much more efficient
   than NFS

Overall, the combination of the DM, the token ring, the Apollo // network root
model provided an efficient and elegant environment for our activities, and
still does.


<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
<  Rick Venable                (O O) |  "Back off, I'm a scientist."   >
<  FDA/CBER Biophysics Lab      )|(  |        -- Bill Murray in        >
<  rvenable@helix.nih.gov       (=)  |           'Ghostbusters'        >
<---------------------------------------------------------------------->

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