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From: drforsey@watcgl.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Multitasking discussion
Message-ID: <640@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Feb-87 12:40:52 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.640
Posted: Mon Feb 23 12:40:52 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Feb-87 01:09:59 EST
References: <8702131709.AA28497@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <1588@lsuc.UUCP>
Reply-To: drforsey@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Forsey)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 27

>4.  Any other worthwhile approach?  NEWS by Sun--I can't see any reason
>to favour this over X-Windows at this point.  Sun claims that it's a
>superset of X-Windows.  If this is so, then fine, I don't see any reason
>to think we couldn't upgrade it to NEWS later if we do X-Windows now.

NeWs is an extensible window manager, you can define whatever protocol
you like to a window by downloading code to the window manager (in Postscript).
NeWS runs a postscript interpreter and uses multiple "light-wieght"
tasks (processes) and message passing internally.

  This is why NeWS might be called a "superset" of X. How one would upgrade
an X-system to NeWS is unclear.

X is very painful to use over slower communications lines. NeWS has internally
been ported to an Atari-ST and has reasonable performance over a 9600 baud
line. What struck me as important about NeWS is that it is based on a high-
level imaging model. It is not just a windowing package. Personally i find
X to be rather massive and inelegant.

  All this is from a talk Gosling (yes the same one as emacs) gave
at UCSC last fall. Last i heard it was coming out in march. US$1000
to universities including source. Apparently sun wants to make the
protocols public and have "reasonable" licensing aggreements.

Dave Forsey
Computer Graphics Laboratory
University of Waterloo