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Message: [QUOTE="Walter Roberson, post: 2471363"] There are lots of them! Indeed, that's a big part of the problem. With good reason. Have you ever looked at the size of the documentation for X and Motif??? Programming a graphics system takes a *lot* of work, if it is to be sufficiently general and flexible and efficient. Various attempts have been made to create industry standards for graphics. OpenGL (an open standard) is a good example -- as is Microsoft's reaction to OpenGL of creating Direct-X. You know the refrains, "OpenGL isn't efficient enough", and "OpenGL interferes with our ability to innovate." Graphics standards have a lot of economic politics involved, because there is big business in creating fast graphics cards. If you weren't thinking as big as X or OpenGL or Direct-X, then you must be thinking of a relatively restricted API -- but then what do you include and what don't you? There has been a huge effort into creating portable graphic systems that look pretty much the same on every platform -- it is called Java. Released by Sun, made incompatible by Microsoft until a Sun forced the issue in court. I'm not at all familiar with Java internals; the rumblings I've heard are that a port of Java to a new system is a considerable effort (which is why it isn't uncommon for OS vendors to lag several releases behind.) How productive would you say it would be for the X3.159 committee people to get together and re-invent the Java graphics interface? Is Microsoft likely to adopt the hypothetical standard if it it provides substantial flexibility? Or are you thinking only of something with less capabilities than tcl/tk ? [/QUOTE]

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