Look and Feel... a red herring (Re: UNIX Expo in NYC)

[Michael Condict]

To clarify this discussion, it should be stated explicitly that there are
two independent parts to a windowing system and there are, not suprisingly,
two different reasons for wanting to standardize them.  The two parts, of
course, are the programmer interface and the user interface (also known as
the "look and feel", a vague phrase which somehow has an undignified sound,
to me).

The last two articles on this subject said "I don't care about standardizing
the look-and-feel, but I want a standardized programmer interface" and vice
versa.  Clearly, one was thinking about easing the programmer's burden and
the other about easing the user's burden.  I see no reason not to do both.
This does not obviate the possibility of multiple implementations of such
software, but I think that both interfaces should be standardized.

Perhaps the way to go is that there should be more than one standard for
user interface and more than one programmer interface, and the supplier of
the software for each different programmer interface would ensure that the
programmer can easily ask the software to use one of the standard user
interfaces.  This of course leads to the m * n explosion that is well known in
the world of programming language translation.  (m = # programmer interfaces,
n = # user interfaces).  Following this analogy, the problem could be solved
by a single, highly general "intermediate" interface, that is neither biased
towards a particular programmer interface or towards a particular user
interface.  Anyone could supply software that maps a desired programmer
interface to this intermediate interface, and anyone else could supply software
that maps this intermediate interface to one of the standard user interfaces.

It wouldn't suprise me if someone has already done this.
-- 
Michael Condict		{att|allegra}!m10ux!mnc
AT&T Bell Labs		(201)582-5911    MH 3B-416
Murray Hill, NJ