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From: ed@visix.com (Ed Devinney)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.motif,comp.windows.x,comp.windows.ms,comp.windows.ms.programmer,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Neuron Data's Open Interface
Message-ID: <1991Jun18.134727.1185@visix.com>
Date: 18 Jun 91 13:47:27 GMT
References: <1991May26.044051.5284@mstr.hgc.edu> <6592@vela.acs.oakland.edu> <1991May28.064919.16358@mstr.hgc.edu> <1991Jun17.184618.10500@eng.umd.edu>
Sender: news@visix.com
Reply-To: ed@visix.com
Organization: Institute for Advanced Latency
Lines: 31

In article <1991Jun17.184618.10500@eng.umd.edu>, stripes@eng.umd.edu (Joshua Osborne) writes:
|> So how do window-less objects make something faster?  Less windows for the
|> server to deal with, smaller working set, easyer to decide where events go.
|> Bigger working set on the client side, larger working set, harder to decide
|> what events go with what objects.

This is all very true, but when discussing something like a multiplatform UI
toolkit, one needs to keep in mind that nice pedagogical abstractions available
in X (windows for minor objects, servers, etc) may not be available in all environments.  

Depending on your definition of efficiency, windowless objects can be way preferable,
as they are much easier to implement on non-X systems, they probably carry less
code-baggage around (unlike, say, Motif apps), and they may (or may not) run faster
overall.

|> What if you have objects that change look when the mouse rolls into them, or
|> just change the mouse cursor?  If objects had windows assoc'ed with them they
|> could use Enter/Leave events (or just set the window cursor, [...]

Again, while X may have nice abstractions for elegant problem solving, those
abstractions do not exist on the majority of machines that people write for.
I realize that this doesn't address your technical questions about windowless
objects, but in the context of multiplatform development one must bow to
some compromises ... and then create elegant mutliplatform solutions :-).

-- 
ed devinney						ed@visix.com
Visix Software Inc., Reston, VA				...!uunet!visix!ed

	"Better to die on your feet than live on your knees"
					- Midnight Oil