Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!csustan!polyslo!csun!sdcrdcf!trwrb!desint!geoff
From: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Why I'm suspicious of NeWS
Message-ID: <1677@desint.UUCP>
Date: 12 Feb 88 08:58:05 GMT
Reply-To: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Organization: Interrupt Technology Corp., Manhattan Beach, CA
Lines: 37

All the NeWS proponents seem to think that its biggest feature, in fact
the only one that "clearly" makes it better than the alternatives like
X, is its programmability.  Well, I'm not convinced.  In fact, I think
the programmability is NeWS's biggest drawback.  (It's second biggest
is its capitalization, which gives me finger cramps. :-)

Why don't I like programmability?  Because I don't like hard-to-find bugs.
C code is hard enough to debug as it is;  I'm not too enamored of the idea
of writing C code which writes Postscript which hangs my NeWS server in
an infinite loop that I then have to try to debug indirectly through C.
No thanks, folks.

This problem is severely aggravated by the fact that Postscript is a
postfix language.  While postfix is truly wonderful for some things, like
real-time calculation (I'll never buy a non-HP calculator), it is truly
hell for most humans to think in.  We're just too thoroughly trained in
infix notation.  As a former PPC member and a veteran of 1500-line HP-41C
programs, I can testify from personal experience about how hard it is to
keep in mind just exactly what you've put on the stack and in what order.
Most people won't bother;  they'll just use NeWS remotely like X, and then
where is the big win?

As to performance, especially in mouse tracking (which is the problem that
NeWS fans always love to sieze on), the overhead of interpreting
Postscript is very similar to the overhead of network communication.
See the recent interview with Brian Reid in Unix Review.  I guess you can
compile the Postscript, but then you've got an interesting problem trying
to predict whether it's worthwhile, since the server has no way of knowing
whether this is a one-shot download or an often-used subroutine.  And I
haven't heard of anybody compiling Postscript yet (though that doesn't prove
Sun doesn't have nefarious plans...).

Finally, there's the "first-vs-better" syndrome.  For many people, it
doesn't matter if NeWS is better, because they've already standardized on
X and they're not about to repeat the learning curve.  So for them, NeWS
will just be a slower version of X.
-- 
	Geoff Kuenning   geoff@ITcorp.com   {uunet,trwrb}!desint!geoff