OPEN LOOK vs Terminal UI
オープンルック / ターミナルUI
OPEN LOOK comes from Platform Screen Languages and Terminal UI from UI Expression. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
OPEN LOOK
A screen language for Unix workstations, specified by Sun Microsystems in a functional specification published by Addison-Wesley in 1989. The book defines two parallel designs, one black and white for monochrome displays and one three dimensional for grayscale and colour, sets a single sans serif variable width face for every common element, and tells implementers that restraint is the key to colour. Each pop-up window carries a pushpin at the left of its header, and pinning it leaves the window on the workspace.
Terminal UI
The terminal look: monospaced phosphor characters on black. The VT100's green afterglow became the primal image of the computer's face, repeated from hacker cinema to modern CLI tools.
| OPEN LOOK | Terminal UI | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1988–1990s | 1970s– |
| Family | Platform Screen Languages | UI Expression |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | A pushpin at the left end of a pop-up window's header, which pins the window to the workspace instead of dismissing it / Three dots after a label announce a window, an outlined triangle announces a menu / Scrollbars split into an elevator, a cable and top and bottom cable anchors, with the dark part of the cable showing how much is in view / The workspace is a 50 percent dither pattern and menu drop shadows are a 75 percent pattern | Single phosphor color on black / The monospace grid / A blinking cursor / Scanlines and glow |
| Best used for | Rebuilding a Unix workstation screen from around 1990 with a look that reads as Sun rather than Motif · Rebuilding a working screen so it survives a one bit display, using dither patterns and outlines alone | Developer tools packing state and next steps into one monospaced screen · Staging technical hardness or secrecy as the look of an interface |
| Type | Set every shared element in the same sans serif variable width face. Size in points rather than pixels, and scale through the 10, 12, 14 and 19 point steps the spec provides. | One monospaced face where emphasis comes from weight and inversion alone |
| Composition | Give each window four resize corners and gather commands into control areas outside the pane. Every pop-up window opens with a header that carries a pushpin. | Everything on the column and row grid, blocks separated by blank lines |
| Material | Make the design work in black and white first. For the three dimensional version pick one background colour, derive the recessed shade by adding 10 to 15 percent black, and reserve white for lit edges. | One phosphor hue on black with scanlines and bloom added sparingly |
| Caution | Starting from the three dimensional colour scheme collapses the moment the design meets a monochrome display, where neither the raised edges nor the pushpin survive. | Heavy scanlines and flicker cost legibility and the atmosphere ends up beating the speed that made the tool worth using. |