spiffy terminals

[Barry Shein]

>I work a lot with the the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. If I
>design a new image programming package for use there which used
>X-windows how many people could use it? About four. If I designed a
>new image programming package that used a tek4010, how many people
>could use it? About one hundred. If astronomers around the world were
>to use it and it needed X windows, how many could use it? A few
>hundred? If it needed a 4010 emulator? A few tens of thousands. 

They used to say this about printing terminals (or, at least, assume
everyone has a paper decwriter and put the graphics to the calcomp,
never assume even a dumb CRT as they were so rare.)

Heck, in astronomy a very few years ago they said VMS was the only
system you could consider developing software for if astronomers were
to use it, it's not so true anymore and Unix is beginning to dominate
all the sciences (then again, I remember when it had to be for an IBM
or Cyber...) Do you still write all this astronomy code in F66?

Anyhow, yes, we're on the cusp of another change...like other changes
it will be too expensive/unwieldy to support two or more diverse and
incompatible software environments and the old environment will lose.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||

Astronomy? Hm, I'm an aries...