From: butler@cs.tulane.edu (Larry Butler) Subject: Re: "Killer app" Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 15:08:56 GMT
This was mailed to me but I'm posting because I thing this discussion
belongs where everyone can see it.
>
> I agree that the operating system is MUCH better, but the simple fact is
> Windows apps blow everything away. It is a shame that MS cannot come up
> with a better operating system to run them on, but... I don't think
> anyone can say that MS Word or Excel is a poor application with respect to
> interface and capabilities.
>
They are great when it comes to capabilities, but I think interface and
especially the documentation leave a lot of room for improvement. That's
wasn't really my point though. Applications that are designed for a
unix-like OS have a lot more available to them and have the potential to me
much more powerful and flexable than anything that runs on dos or windows.
Take seyon for example. Seyon is a terminal emulator package for unix. It
looks as good and works better than anything there is on dos or windows. It
takes full advantage or the multiprocessing capability of unix. It is very
logically divided into modules that make very flexable. The actual terminal
emulation and the file transfers are done externally. You probably know
that, but do you realize how good that is? No one has to reinvent the wheel
thus no incompatibillites between various wheels. I've never seen a dos
application that made as much sense as this. Using xterm for terminal means
less memory load on the system (shared pages, dos will never be able to do
that). That also means that any new terminal emulator you get for seyon in
the future you will also be able to use in the same way you use xterm.
I'm starting to ramble. The point is unix is great. Don't try to reinvent
dos applications or make them run on linux. Linux is better and we can make
better application with less effort than would be needed for the same thing
on dos.
BTW, I don't know the author of seyon. It's just an example.
Larry