OPEN LOOK

OPEN LOOK

Volume 3: OPEN LOOK User's Guide

Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual

Volume 7B: XView Reference Manual

Volume 3: OPEN LOOK User's Guide

Ian Darwin, Valerie Quercia, and Tim O'Reilly
Unpublished, 1993

Download the book in PDF format.

I started working on Volume 3: OPEN LOOK in the eary 1990s, when Sun made the XView source code freely available. (Please remember this: it really was the world's first open source commercial toolkit for the X Window System; "Open Motif" came almost two decades later, after the freeware QT and GTK toolkit were in wide circulation.)

As the 1990s rolled on, the Unix industry came to a pitched battle between Motif (backed by IBM, DEC, HP, and SCO) and OPEN LOOK (backed by Sun and AT&T).

Around 1993, I finished the book, and happened to be travelling to California so I delivered the manuscript for review to Tim O'Reilly in person, in his office an hour north of San Francisco. He looked at it, and said something like, "So, did you hear about the announcement on Tuesday?" In response to my blank stare, he related that Sun had capitulated on OPEN LOOK in return for the other vendors capitulating on Sun's desktop tools (Calendar Manager &c, plus the ToolTalk technology underlying it), and the vendors had all joined together to form the Common Open Systems Environment group, whose first project was to be the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). And it was to be based on Motif, not OPEN LOOK.

The upshot was that Volume 3: OPEN LOOK never was published, despite a long period of indecision. (Tim asked readers in their then-hardcopy magazine/catalog if they thought it should be published, but results were inconclusive.)

Finally, in 1995, I decided to take the bull by the horns and publish an XView and OPEN LOOK CD-ROM. I got permission from O'Reilly & Associates to include Vol3 OL and Vol 7A and 7B, collected as much other OPEN LOOK stuff as I could, including the example code from competing publishers' books, and burned a CD. I had a few hundred copies pressed, and I sold it over the net for the rest of the 1990s. It only sold a few hundred copies, and the last copy sold in 2002. It never caught on in a big way, for some reason. There are, of course, a lot of "could have, should have" items here, but rather than dwell on them, I'm simply releasing it for free to benefit anybody who still uses OPEN LOOK.

Ian Darwin

Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual
By Dan Heller
3rd Edition September 1991, Updated by Thomas Van Raalte
This book is out of print.
Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual is available in its entirety in PDF format. Thanks to Ian Darwin for providing this content.

Volume 7B: XView Reference Manual
Edited by Thomas Van Raalte
September 1991
This book is out of print.
Volume 7B: XView Reference Manual is available in its entirety in PDF format. Thanks to Ian Darwin for providing this content.

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OPEN LOOK
Volume 3: OPEN LOOK User's Guide Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual Volume 7B: XView Reference Manual

Volume 3: OPEN LOOK User's Guide Ian Darwin, Valerie Quercia, and Tim O'Reilly Unpublished, 1993 Download the book in PDF format. I started working on Volume 3: OPEN LOOK in the eary 1990s, when Sun made the XView source code freely available. (Please remember this: it really was the world's first open source commercial toolkit for the X Window System; "Open Motif" came almost two decades later, after the freeware QT and GTK toolkit were in wide circulation.) As the 1990s rolled on, the Unix industry came to a pitched battle between Motif (backed by IBM, DEC, HP, and SCO) and OPEN LOOK (backed by Sun and AT&T). Around 1993, I finished the book, and happened to be travelling to California so I delivered the manuscript for review to Tim O'Reilly in person, in his office an hour north of San Francisco. He looked at it, and said something like, "So, did you hear about the announcement on Tuesday?" In response to my blank stare, he related that Sun had capitulated on OPEN LOOK in return for the other vendors capitulating on Sun's desktop tools (Calendar Manager &c, plus the ToolTalk technology underlying it), and the vendors had all joined together to form the Common Open Systems Environment group, whose first project was to be the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). And it was to be based on Motif, not OPEN LOOK. The upshot was that Volume 3: OPEN LOOK never was published, despite a long period of indecision. (Tim asked readers in their then-hardcopy magazine/catalog if they thought it should be published, but results were inconclusive.) Finally, in 1995, I decided to take the bull by the horns and publish an XView and OPEN LOOK CD-ROM. I got permission from O'Reilly & Associates to include Vol3 OL and Vol 7A and 7B, collected as much other OPEN LOOK stuff as I could, including the example code from competing publishers' books, and burned a CD. I had a few hundred copies pressed, and I sold it over the net for the rest of the 1990s. It only sold a few hundred copies, and the last copy sold in 2002. It never caught on in a big way, for some reason. There are, of course, a lot of "could have, should have" items here, but rather than dwell on them, I'm simply releasing it for free to benefit anybody who still uses OPEN LOOK. Ian Darwin


	Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual By Dan Heller 3rd Edition September 1991, Updated by Thomas Van Raalte This book is out of print. Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual is available in its entirety in PDF format. Thanks to Ian Darwin for providing this content.

	Volume 7B: XView Reference Manual Edited by Thomas Van Raalte September 1991 This book is out of print. Volume 7B: XView Reference Manual is available in its entirety in PDF format. Thanks to Ian Darwin for providing this content.