A long-time dream of open systems advocates becomes real today as UNIX vendors' Common Desktop Environment (CDE) debuts on the UniForum '95 exhibit floor in Dallas.
CDE is a technology specification for a common, cross-platform user interface environment for all UNIX systems. Because CDE is a specification rather than a product, the various vendors who endorse CDE have created their own products based on the specification. CDE sprang from an agreement announced two years ago at the UniForum '93 conference in San Francisco. At that time, UNIX system vendors IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and Novell (then UNIX System Laboratories and Univel) joined and announced the Common Open Software Environment. The group was joined later by Digital Equipment Corp. Their intent was jointly to produce technologies that would unify the UNIX industry, making interoperability more real for the end user. The strategy clearly was designed to bring the industry together to face the success of Microsoft's desktop juggernaut, and its pending release of the UNIX act-alike, Windows NT.
Engineers from the various companies worked jointly to produce the CDE specification, and now CDE 1.0 is ready for the market. The CDE Interoperability Pavilion on the show floor will feature at least 16 pedestals, each displaying systems and applications from different hardware and software vendors, and all of them supporting CDE. The 16 systems will be linked through a common Ethernet/ TCP/IP local-area network, so the COSE partners can demonstrate CDE's cross-platform interoperability.
CDE closely resembles HP's desktop interface, the Visual User Environment (VUE). On the desktop tools side, SunSoft, the software business unit of Sun, contributed the calendar and scheduling tools, as well as its ToolTalk messaging system, which allows different applications to interact and communicate.
Unique to CDE is the concept of virtual workspaces, which allow users to group their applications for different tasks. For instance, engineers using a UNIX desktop can use CDE's virtual workspace capabilities to create one workspace for their office automation applications-word processing, spreadsheets, and contact manager-and a second for engineering and computer-aided design applications.
Another new feature is CDE's interoperability. Because all desktop and server environments will now appear and act the same, users will be able to launch applications residing on a server from one hardware manufacturer from the desktop workstation of another.
CDE also allows vendors to customize the user environment's capabilities to a particular user's needs. It provides open application programming interfaces with which vendors can build their own CDE extensions without sacrificing cross-platform compatibility.
At press time, the vendors were taking the following approaches to product releases: