From sq.com!ian Thu Feb 16 15:15:38 1995 From: csw@well.sf.ca.us (Chris Warth) Subject: NeWS newsgroup Date: 13 Feb 1995 05:46:13 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: well.sf.ca.us Content-Length: 3399 Content-Type: text Status: RO X-Lines: 74 Let's take a look at some recent postings to this newsgroup. Since January 24th There have been, I think, 22 articles posted. Rounding down, the traffic breaks down as follows: #articles percentage topic 14 63% Microsoft windows questions 4 18% OpenLook FAQs (crossposted) 3 13% Newsgroup charter 1 4% NeWS related questions I'm being generous here - the single supposed NeWS related question was actually about NeWSPrint, not the window system NeWS. This inevitably leads to the question "does there have to be a newsgroup for this silly traffic?" If it weren't so pathetic it might almost be sporting to post Windows questions here, just to bait the NeWS defenders. The question of the group's purpose is inadequately addressed in the newsgroup charter from Pat Lashley. He writes: "Now that Sun has announced that NeWS is being EOLed (EOL = End Of Life), some of the long-time readers of this group may suggest that we simply abandon it to clueless WINDOWS users. But I belong to the camp that strongly rejects this suggestion. There are still people using NeWS; it will still be available for some time; and there are even people working on freely-redistributable NeWS clones; so I believe that this group can still serve its original purpose. And when it no longer can serve that purpose, it should be abolished rather than abandoned to misuse." This FAQ needs some updating (last updated March of 1994). First Sun hasn't just announced NeWS EOL, they've done it. NeWS hasn't shipped on a Sun platform in what, two years? More? The last I saw of NeWS, some very good engineers had made it look sufficiently like Adobe's Display PostScript to run much of Illustrator. Whether that was a factor in Sun's getting a license for DPS, I don't know. The fact remains that Sun does ship DPS in their window server today, and it's pretty cool - you should check it out. In my opinion DPS still has most of the good things about NeWS, without the more ridiculous elements, like several-hundred line postscript programs written by hand. NeWS (nee SunDew?) was a great idea, but it's time has passed. the people who worked on NeWS or TNT have moved on to new projects. They probably learned a lot from the NeWS experience (not all of it positive) but it is definitely time to move on to other things. As to someone producing a free NeWS clone, give me a break. Back it up with some names or stop claiming this to be true, because it's not. Today there are better language choices if you really want to make a programmable server. Stick a little TCL, or much better, Scheme interpreter down there. You can still use a PostScript imaging model without having to deal with PostScript's simplistic programming model. In any case, the group has outlived its usefulness. For those of you who have a burning desire to talk amongst yourselves about how bad MS Windows is and how great NeWS could have been, why don't you set up a mailing list amongst yourselves? In the meantime, let's put this newsgroup out of it's misery; it's an embarrassment. What is the "official" procedure for killing a group? -csw -- These opinions are my own. ----- End Included Message -----