Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!hsdndev!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: X sucks (was: Re: Ware Ware Wizardjin)
Message-ID: <15785@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 10 Apr 91 05:29:42 GMT
References: <9104072151.AA28702@gaia> <128236@uunet.UU.NET>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 16

In article <128236@uunet.UU.NET> rbj@uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) writes:
>Another thing I hate about X is the protocol.

To my mind the worst problem with X is that to get anything at all done,
two processes must communicate back and forth through the protocol
bottleneck.  This inherently limits the interactivity attainable using
typical hardware (Sun workstations, for example) to levels below my
personal standards for interactive graphics.  To give a specific
example, when I borrow the use of somebody's Sun running an X window
manager, I often fail to "hit" pop-up menu items when I select them.
That's because I'm used to the responsiveness of the Blit family of
terminals, where the interaction is entirely under control of a single
process with direct access to the terminal handware.  What seems like
a natural expectation for selection from menus becomes more difficult
under X, where I have to give the protocols time to trickle back and
forth while I'm making the menu seclection.