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From: jg@crl.dec.com (Jim Gettys)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: OW as a PostScript X server...
Message-ID: <1990Nov12.221429.23721@crl.dec.com>
Date: 12 Nov 90 22:14:29 GMT
References: <9011121513.AA06367@islanders.>
Sender: news@crl.dec.com (USENET News System)
Reply-To: jg@crl.dec.com (Jim Gettys)
Organization: DEC Cambridge Research Lab
Lines: 46

In article <9011121513.AA06367@islanders.>, fgreco@dprg-330.GOVt.shearson.COM (Frank Greco) writes:
> > 
> > 	And, no X extensions are involved; you're guaranteed to get PS
> > 	rendering with OW.
> > 
> > That's right; you get it by involving a different world.  You first
> > create an X window, then open a second socket to the NeWS side of the
> > server, then pass the window-id of the X window across to the NeWS
> > world, then do PostScript'ish things to the NeWS world, while doing
> > X'y things to the X world.
> > 
> > Strikes me it would be "a good thing" to have a pseudo-Display
> > PostScript extension to the OW server, so that a programmer could
> > manipulate xnews just as they manipulate the DEC or IBM servers
> > extended with real Display PostScript.  The way it is now, you have no
> > hope of running your (two-world) program on anything but xnews.
> 
> 	What's wrong with that?  Considering the current (and
> 	future) market that Sun and SPARC clones enjoy,
> 	that's not bad at all.  If you design your software decently
> 	enuf (talk about your basic Pandora's box statement...;-)...
> 	you should be able to localize dependencies in imaging for
> 	different targets.  The engineers at Frame did this.
> 	Ventura is doing the same with their product (GEM, MS Windows,
> 	PM, Mac and soon OpenLook versions).
> 

The technical problem with the X11/NeWS merged server is the following:

If you want to mix X and PostScript based imaging models (and I know people
who do, for very good reasons; each imaging model has much to offer the
application programmer), you have to synchronize the two connections.  This is 
more than a minor pain to an application programmer in this cicumstances
(and can be a non-trival performance problem; it basically involves putting
XSync calls and equivalent everywhere you care about order, which requires
a server round trip); and comes naturally if you are talking to a server 
over a single connection.

I personally agree that it would be very nice to have a common X PostScript
extension, that would work no matter what the implementation of X, so that
applications programmers could count on it.

And as to the rest of your message, isn't Shearson the brokerage house that
has taken a big interest in Sun Microsystems? Or is it one of the other
ones?
				- Jim