Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod!mips!prls!pyramid!athertn!Atherton.COM!dlw From: dlw@Atherton.COM (David Williams) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: why X? what am I missing? Keywords: Standards Client-Server Message-ID: <34024@athertn.Atherton.COM> Date: 14 Jan 91 22:46:19 GMT References: <2013@autodesk.COM> <12048.278dfd95@ecs.umass.edu> Sender: news@athertn.Atherton.COM Reply-To: dlw@Atherton.COM (David Williams) Organization: Atherton Technology -- Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 92 To Gary Lang and Eric P. Scott, Realize that we all want NeXT to be successfull. Those who advocate the existence of an X server in some form on NeXT wish to see them make it by the check-list folks at most businesses/institutions. >>In article <2013@autodesk.COM>, glang@Autodesk.COM (Gary Lang) writes: >>At Penn State we have VLSI tools like magic that run under X. The >Great. "Now available at BusinessLand. magic, the VLSI tools for your >small or large business." "Now available at Businessland. SoftPC, the MS-DOS emulator for your small or large business. Available for most major Unix boxes, Macintosh and the NeXT machines." >Repeat after me, "NeXT will potentially lose the sale of 5 computers >if it doesn't get aboard the X bandwagon". That was easy wasn't it? I would assume that there are more university/research sales that would be lost from NOT having X than just the "5" you infer. Notice Apple has X on its Macintosh line. Of course they won't sell tons o' copies of it. But, it IS a checklist item and getting machines on the ol' approved list is a big part of the battle. NCSA telnet helped a great number of people connect to boxes on TCP/IP based networks in the macintosh community...An X windows server would do the same for those of us who work in heterogeneous unix based network worlds. In this case NeXT isn't even being asked to write it or port it, but rather to help support a NeXT customer who is making it FREELY available. >Gary T. Lang Repeat after me, we live in a multivendor world. Let's see who the dominant players are in the unix marketplace: Sun--runs X. IBM--runs X. DEC--runs X (on both VMS and Ultrix). HP--runs X. SCO[unix on intel]--runs X. Even Apple runs X (on both Mac OS and A/UX). If you work a company that develops UNIX tools and runs on unix workstations then all those hardware vendors support The X Window system. They also support TCP/IP, NFS and other *NETWORKING* technologies. Now NeXT, the company, can certainly create and market their own proprietary networking products that are an improvement over existing technologies and we might applaud them for doing so. However, would you use a NeXT in a business and academic environment where you were *ISOLATED* from the rest of the world? Perhaps yes, if you had zero investment in other unix boxes, had NO interest in transfering existing information from the computing platforms you currently have or in communicating with said platforms. You'll notice that NeXT DOES support NFS, TCP/IP and other unix standards. Think of the X Window System as just more of the same. Also realize that most new unix tools today are being built with a X based interface. If you would like to use a NeXT workstation as your gateway to all your work you are stymied by the lack of a working X window server if you are unix based. Companies and institutions DO have investments in equipment other than NeXT... most assuredly Universities do. To be the interpersonal computer company--implies that you COMMUNICATE--just as you like sharing file systems with nfs, how about sharing applications, interfaces and machine resources via TCP/IP and X Windows? I would think that SF State and AutoDesk might have more than just NeXTstations. I would think that from time to time you might want or have to use a program that is not yet ported to the Next machine. If it is X based you can't do it across the network from your NeXT box..you have to go to a box that runs X. Well guess what, there is a group of people who will give you this for FREE, all they need is a few minutes/hours of answers from NeXT and away we go. Seems pretty reasonable to me... Course I guess I'm one of those "suckers" who just wants to have X on my cube (*I* bought my cube) so I can do the work I am paid for AND start to develop new products in the NeXTStep environment. David Williams dlw@atherton.com