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From: matt@karazm.math.uh.edu (Matt Emerson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: (Ne)X(T) Terminals---a hot product idea?
Keywords: DPS, X
Message-ID: <1991Apr28.044626.11746@menudo.uh.edu>
Date: 28 Apr 91 04:46:26 GMT
References: <1991Apr25.084827.1475@math.ucla.edu> <1991Apr26.193131.10122@wimsey.bc.ca> <15108@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
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In article <15108@darkstar.ucsc.edu> isbell@ucscf.UCSC.EDU (Art Isbell) writes:
>
>In article <1991Apr26.193131.10122@wimsey.bc.ca> jchin@wimsey.bc.ca (Joseph Chin) writes:
>more network traffic than X jobs.  Has anyone run the same application under X
>and DPS (there are a few that have been ported to both, I think) and compared
>network efficiency?  I think this is a really important issue.  I had always
>assumed that part of X's braindeadedness (!) relative to DPS was its voluminous
>network protocol.  But maybe DPS ain't so good either.  Can anyone comment?

While we're speaking of the bandwidth issue, I'd like to point out that
Sun's NeWS product addressed this issue very neatly. The problem with X and
DPS over the network is that whenever you want to draw something (say a
dialog box) you have to send a lot of instructions over the wire each time you
need to draw it. If the dialog box is complex, this could munch up a lot of
bandwidth. With NeWS, you say, OK, I'm going to be drawing this dialog box a
lot; so you write a PostScript program to draw it and handle interaction
with it and then you download it to the server (where the screen is) ONLY
ONE TIME. Afterwards, whenever you need to draw the box, you send a single
little message from your client program to invoke the PostScript routine
over on the server. I think this is a superb idea. The key is that the
server is dynamically extensible -- essentially, you can add new "primitives"
as you go along.

Just FYI...
--
Matt Emerson
matt@karazm.math.uh.edu