Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!emory!km
From: km@mathcs.emory.edu (Ken Mandelberg)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Non-Unix X clients?
Message-ID: <5400@emory.mathcs.emory.edu>
Date: 3 May 90 14:02:18 GMT
Organization: Math & Computer Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
Lines: 34

In theory, X provides a framework to mix clients distributed from many
diverse hardware/software platforms on a single desktop. In practice,
almost all the clients I know are  programs that run on Unix or were
ported from Unix clients.

For an X user on a potent Unix workstation, the advantages of using X
over a framebuffer based window system with necessarily local clients,
are fairly subtle. X lets you use the CPU power of even more potent
Unix like hosts, use several CPUS at once, and run software not ported
or licensed to your particular workstation. On the other hand X
consumes more resources and has generally poorer performance on local
clients than those running on a framebuffer based window system.

I think it would be easier to sell people on X, if there were actually
significant X clients, which are not ports or cousins of Unix clients.
For example, I see no reason why a Mac or DOS program which was written
in its host assembler with dependencies on the host OS, could not be
converted into an X client (although the graphics host dependencies may
in fact be exactly the hardest part to change).

I suppose since DecWindows is a strategic VMS windowing product, there
may be VMS X-clients that are not directly related to Unix clients. I'm
not familiar enough with VMS offerings to know.

So now to the question. Is there a signficant set of X-clients that run
somewhere other than a Unix platform, that offer applications not
otherwise available on Unix?


-- 
Ken Mandelberg      | km@mathcs.emory.edu          PREFERRED
Emory University    | {decvax,gatech}!emory!km     UUCP 
Dept of Math and CS | km@emory.bitnet              NON-DOMAIN BITNET  
Atlanta, GA 30322   | Phone: (404) 727-7963