Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU!RWS From: RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: NeWS and X Message-ID: <870516110816.9.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: Sat, 16-May-87 17:58:00 EDT Article-I.D.: KILLINGT.870516110816.9.RWS Posted: Sat May 16 17:58:00 1987 Date-Received: Mon, 18-May-87 03:44:29 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 67 Date: Sat, 16 May 87 11:08 EDT From: Robert Scheifler Subject: NeWS and X To: seismo!maximo!mo@mimsy.umd.edu, NeWS-makers@brillig.umd.edu X is fast???? Give me a break. I just saw News and X running side by side, News on a 160 and X on a 260. News was just as fast if not faster. It is amazing how silly people can be. Trying to make blanket statements about X or NeWS is stupid to begin with, but comparing an unsupported non-product with a supported product is less than sensible. In particular, try to do the rubber-band-line tracking trick with X. The effect was virtually instantaneous on and between GPXes, last time I tried it. Of course, the Sun port is less than adequate in this area (due to a mismatch between what the vanilla X10 server would like to see for a kernel interface and what the Sun kernel provides), but we wouldn't want a reality like that to affect our unbiased opinion, would we? Why is it that anyone who thinks they understand TECO and/or EMACS can build a user interface??? I got big news for them. If X becomes the defacto window standard for window systems you can completely kiss-off the real commercial marketplace. It completely fulfills everyone's worst fears and nightmares about UNIX. It is easy to lump lots of different things into the collective "X" and then dump on it, just as so many do with "Unix", "AI", etc. At the lowest level, X Version 11 has very little to say about "user interface". And if you ask various vendors who have "endorsed X" exactly what they mean, you will get very different answers. To most it appears to mean standardizing on a lowest level (non-UI) C programming interface and a network protocol. Others only care about the programming interface, or only the network protocol. Others want to standardize on a C toolkit. Off-hand, I don't know of ANY company endorsing existing V10 (or V11) user interfaces as standards, and certainly there are companies that are off doing their own thing here. That is one reason WHY vendors are backing the X protocol: it doesn't unduly restrict them in terms of user interface. [All of this is probably just as applicable to NeWS.] I am not claiming the Mac interface is perfect, but before you make any claims about knowing anything about what is going on with user interfaces, you better well deeply understand all the issues, tradeoffs, and decisions that when into formulating those guidelines, otherwise you are fooling yourself. The same, of course, applies to claims about network-based virtual console protocols, like X and NeWS. Only when the UNIX folks realize that, in fact, they really don't know crap about what windows are good for and will take a look at a system with tons of extremely consistant, truly window-based software will we ever see UNIX window systems that are worthy of the name. The fact that you seem to view "X" as somehow synonymous with "Unix window system" is just another indication that you are confused.