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From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Macintosh vs. X windows
Message-ID: <108@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jan 91 15:36:46 GMT
References: <930@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 29

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?  I
>know nothing about the Mac toolbox, but I've been reading the O'Reilly
>manuals on Xlib, Xt and Xview.  Seems like the Mac toolbox couldn't
>possibly be as complicated as X.  I've only got one plausible
>explanation:  hardware platforms that run X can be much more powerful
>than Macs, so if you want to develop a resource-intensive application,
>you should gravitate toward X.

I wouldn't be too sure.  I suspect that MacApp is at least as complicated
as X.  At least in my impression of it from Booch's book it seemed that way.
Of course your combining Xlib, Xt, and XView together makes it all
seem more complicated.  All you really need is XView and the graphics routines
out of Xlib for most purposes.  (Or alternatively one widget set, such as
the Motif library, on top of Xt).  I would suggest concentrating first on
just one programmer's interface to X, rather than trying to learn all of them.
[Some people, including me, think that XView is easier to learn than Xt].

Now reasons to run X.  The most important to me is platform independence.
This has two components: most applications need only be recompiled to run
on a new platform; and the application and display may be on different
machines, as long as they are on the same network.  This last is a great
benefit, since in a network environment it allows you to run apps that you
do not have on your local machine exactly as if they were local.
[Note that X is available for the Mac!!]
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)