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Wow looks like a sys admin made that UI. I knew a brilliant sys admin who loved Solaris and still had it running under his desk. All the forms he designed were

by wil421 7y ago

Wow looks like a sys admin made that UI. I knew a brilliant sys admin who loved Solaris and still had it running under his desk. All the forms he designed were way too busy and all over the place. More options than anyone could possibly use.

whatusername 7y ago
to be fair -- that UI is literally designed to be an example of all the different forms options that were possible. So that was kindof the point. "It’s a programming example for The NeWS Toolkit, and it tests out and shows how to use all the different widgets, dialogs, drag and drop, lightweight threading, and PostScript drawing."
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  That's right! Here's the source code, with meticulous comments explaining how it works, since it was meant to serve as a programming example to help people learn how to use TNT / OOP / NeWS / PostScript. https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.txt https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.txt I even wrote a manual entry (it shipped with Solaris 2.0, so documentation was required): https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.6.txt https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.6.txt I just posted more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383697 PizzaTool was written in Sun's "NeWS" dialect of PostScript (which James Gosling made after Emacs but before Java), which it has all kinds of extensions for multiple drawing surfaces (canvases), events, light weight threads, networking, object oriented programming, etc. So for example PizzaTool would fork off a light weight thread to handle spinning the pizza, and another one to draw toppings, and the user interface had its own thread of course. So the user interface would not freeze up while it drew toppings and spun the pizza, all at the same time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS >NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS coherently: > - used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming. > - used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML and CSS for rendering. > - used PostScript data instead of XML and JSON for data representation.
weare138 7y ago
To be fair, most software from that era looked like that. For added old school fun, most of them were terminal apps that didn't support a mouse.
semiotagonal 7y ago
I don't know how anyone could maintain their appetite for what they were ordering while looking at that toothpaste-green and tomato-crème color scheme.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  I thought of it as "minty fresh"! At least it wasn't as bad as TCL/Tk's original default "Bisque" (aka "Ousterhour Beige" aka "Baby Diarrhea Gamut") color scheme. ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17173197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17173197 https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/tk_bisque https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/tk_bisque The "bisque is beautiful" slogan first appeared on a T-shirt in 1995. http://www.nyx.net/~tpoindex/tcl-wear/bisque.html http://www.nyx.net/~tpoindex/tcl-wear/bisque.html
DonHopkins 7y ago
If you thought PizzaTool looked like a 747 cockpit, you should have seen "XBugTool", which was originally an insanely complicated SunView application called "BugTool" that was run through an AWK script to convert it to XView, and the "monkey on the back of all Sun engineers" that we were required to use to report bugs. It had dynamically reconfiguring scrolling sub-panels of widgets inside of other dynamically reconfiguring scrolling panels of widgets, that would dynamically reconfigure, flicker, and repaint the screen madly, whenever you picked items from menus or just looked at it funny! Just don't DARE to use XBugTool to report a bug against itself, as I foolishly tried to do once, after I teased its scrolling lists, and it got angry and froze my mouse, stole my input focus, and would not give it back. I was trapped in XBugTool and could not get out, so I wrote a desperate cry for help as Sun Bug ID #1059974. http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/xbugtool.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/xbugto...
- rini17 7y ago
  Is there a screenshot of xbugtool (or video but that's prolly asking too much)? Google did not find anything.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    I regret never making a screen snapshot myself, so probably not. I fear that Oracle is keeping XBugTool in reserve as kind of a doomsday weapon to deploy on unsuspecting customers they suspect of disloyalty, to prevent them from ever filing bugs against any Oracle software. One thing I did keep a screen snapshot of was of how XCalc loses its shit after you resize it a bunch of times. http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/XCalc.gif http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/XCalc....

by wil421 7y ago

whatusername 7y ago

to be fair -- that UI is literally designed to be an example of all the different forms options that were possible. So that was kindof the point. "It’s a programming example for The NeWS Toolkit, and it tests out and shows how to use all the different widgets, dialogs, drag and drop, lightweight threading, and PostScript drawing."

DonHopkins 7y ago
That's right! Here's the source code, with meticulous comments explaining how it works, since it was meant to serve as a programming example to help people learn how to use TNT / OOP / NeWS / PostScript. https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.txt https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.txt I even wrote a manual entry (it shipped with Solaris 2.0, so documentation was required): https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.6.txt https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.6.txt I just posted more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383697 PizzaTool was written in Sun's "NeWS" dialect of PostScript (which James Gosling made after Emacs but before Java), which it has all kinds of extensions for multiple drawing surfaces (canvases), events, light weight threads, networking, object oriented programming, etc. So for example PizzaTool would fork off a light weight thread to handle spinning the pizza, and another one to draw toppings, and the user interface had its own thread of course. So the user interface would not freeze up while it drew toppings and spun the pizza, all at the same time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS >NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS coherently: > - used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming. > - used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML and CSS for rendering. > - used PostScript data instead of XML and JSON for data representation.

weare138 7y ago

To be fair, most software from that era looked like that. For added old school fun, most of them were terminal apps that didn't support a mouse.

semiotagonal 7y ago

I don't know how anyone could maintain their appetite for what they were ordering while looking at that toothpaste-green and tomato-crème color scheme.

DonHopkins 7y ago
I thought of it as "minty fresh"! At least it wasn't as bad as TCL/Tk's original default "Bisque" (aka "Ousterhour Beige" aka "Baby Diarrhea Gamut") color scheme. ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17173197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17173197 https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/tk_bisque https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/tk_bisque The "bisque is beautiful" slogan first appeared on a T-shirt in 1995. http://www.nyx.net/~tpoindex/tcl-wear/bisque.html http://www.nyx.net/~tpoindex/tcl-wear/bisque.html

DonHopkins 7y ago

If you thought PizzaTool looked like a 747 cockpit, you should have seen "XBugTool", which was originally an insanely complicated SunView application called "BugTool" that was run through an AWK script to convert it to XView, and the "monkey on the back of all Sun engineers" that we were required to use to report bugs. It had dynamically reconfiguring scrolling sub-panels of widgets inside of other dynamically reconfiguring scrolling panels of widgets, that would dynamically reconfigure, flicker, and repaint the screen madly, whenever you picked items from menus or just looked at it funny! Just don't DARE to use XBugTool to report a bug against itself, as I foolishly tried to do once, after I teased its scrolling lists, and it got angry and froze my mouse, stole my input focus, and would not give it back. I was trapped in XBugTool and could not get out, so I wrote a desperate cry for help as Sun Bug ID #1059974. http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/xbugtool.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/xbugto...

rini17 7y ago
Is there a screenshot of xbugtool (or video but that's prolly asking too much)? Google did not find anything.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  I regret never making a screen snapshot myself, so probably not. I fear that Oracle is keeping XBugTool in reserve as kind of a doomsday weapon to deploy on unsuspecting customers they suspect of disloyalty, to prevent them from ever filing bugs against any Oracle software. One thing I did keep a screen snapshot of was of how XCalc loses its shit after you resize it a bunch of times. http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/XCalc.gif http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/XCalc....