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From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: Macintosh vs. X windows
Message-ID: <1991Jan31.021859.21850@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 31 Jan 91 02:18:59 GMT
References: <930@borg.cs.unc.edu> <1991Jan28.173654.10133@cs.utk.edu>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Followup-To: comp.windows.misc
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
Lines: 39

As quoted from <1991Jan28.173654.10133@cs.utk.edu> by de5@ornl.gov (Dave Sill):
+---------------
| In article <930@borg.cs.unc.edu>, lusk@hilbert.cs.unc.edu (John Lusk) writes:
| >I hesitate to ask this.  Given a choice between developing for a
| >Macintosh and developing for X windows, why would anybody choose X?
| 
| Because they don't want to be tied to single vendor.  Or perhaps they
| realize that X-based systems are the present/future of desktop
| computing.
+---------------

There is at least one Mac-emulator for X and other window systems, not to
mention critters like the Amax for the Amiga.  In general, however, you are
correct:  X is more portable.  BUT:  you didn't really answer the question
that was asked, which involved why a more complex system would be chosen over
a less-complex one.

Here's a stab at a more relevant answer.

The Mac has a user interface.  X is *not* a user interface, however; it is a
toolkit for *building* user interfaces.  (Consider Open Look vs. Motif, both
of which are built on X.)  The Mac provides *some* low-level mechanisms for
building your own alternative user interface, but not a full set; anything you
build will be decidedly MacOS-like because the most primitive operations
available on the Mac are the low-level MacOS interface ones.

Thus, it takes more work to write for *raw* X than for MacOS, because you need
to build the user interface.  It takes somewhat less work to build for
specific GUIs built on X; both Motif and Open Look provide toolkits, similar
to the MacOS Toolbox.  But then you're tied to that GUI; something built for
raw X should run on *any* X, including the ones underlying Motif and Open
Look.

++Brandon
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