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From: don@zardoz.coral.COM (Don Dewar)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Macintosh vs. X windows
Message-ID: <9102041413.AA26055@zardoz.coral.com>
Date: 4 Feb 91 14:13:19 GMT
References: <930@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 59


) 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.
) 

There are actually many more reasons than that.  There is hardware
independence, defacto standards, and free software to name a few.  X
runs on many platforms.  If I have two different machines, such as a
386 and a SPARC, running X, they can use each other as a resource
seemlessly.  For instance, last week one of my peers here, who has a
386 with X wanted to display a very nice color gif image using xgif.
Unfortunately his monitor has only fair resolution.  So, he used my
SPARC's display to show the image.

X has become a defacto standard UI platform under unix.  So you get
all the benefits of standards, that I will not enumerate.

People are writing oodles of good free software.  I know that there is
free software for Macs, but the amount for X will surely eclipse that
for the Mac very soon, if it hasn't already.  X is a more free
environment in general.  

Granted, the programming platform itself might be a little more
difficult, but sometimes you have to work harder to get more.

) I know this is a horribly undefined question, so here's some
) background: I'm about to start a major project, I have my choice of
) platforms (simplistically put), and I don't know a whole lot about
) programming for either platform.

The answer to this question depends alot on who the software is for.
If is just for yourself, use what you feel most comfortable with.  If
it is for other people in an existing organization, look around you.
Do you have alot of UNIX workstations, or are you getting them?  If
not, maybe you should stick with Mac.  I notice your address seems to
be that of an educational institution.  You probably will want to be
able to share your work with the world at large.  If this is the case,
use X.  Using X and the build tools (imake) that come with it, allows
other X users to build and run your programs easily.

In addition, you might want to use X just for your own education.  


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