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From: RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Postscript Vs Xwindows
Message-ID: <870312094512.7.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 12-Mar-87 09:45:00 EST
Article-I.D.: KILLINGT.870312094512.7.RWS
Posted: Thu Mar 12 09:45:00 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Mar-87 06:30:35 EST
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    Why use Xwindows instead of Postscript?
    Does Postscript work at a higher level
    of abstraction leading to more bits over
    a serial line?

This is a slightly malformed question.  X is a window system that
includes a graphics substrate, PostScript is a graphics system.
A better version of your question would be "Why X graphics primitives
instead of PostScript?".  One possible answer is that Adobe says they
will be providing PostScript as an extension to X, and Sun says they
will be providing X as an extension to NeWS.  Sun has stated that they
would like NeWS to run efficiently over slow serial lines, and they
apparently have (several?) encoding schemes for this purpose, although
I have never seen any details.  The X protocol is really geared toward
higher performance communication channels.