Xref: utzoo comp.windows.x:3031 comp.windows.news:436 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!hc!dingler From: dingler@hc.DSPO.GOV (Robert Dingler) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.windows.news Subject: Re: NeWS or X - which to choose? Message-ID: <14279@hc.DSPO.GOV> Date: 15 Apr 88 17:49:37 GMT Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 118 Keywords: NeWS, X, Summary About a month ago I posted a request for opinions about which window system to use, X or NeWS. My group uses both UNIX (SUNs) and VMS for development and needs a common window system that is available on both these systems. Both X and NeWS will be available on these systems in the near future. (Someone, and they have requested that I not say who just yet, is porting NeWS to VMS.) My request was just the beginning of a process to evaluate and select a window system. Below you will find a summary of the responses I got from my March 22 posting of "NeWS or X - which to choose?". I thank all of those who took the time to respond to my request. The informations has helped us get started on our evaluation process. Clearly, to make a correct choice one must evaluate both systems and judge which is best based on their own unique requirements. This we are doing now. If anyone would like to see the complete text of all the responses please mail your requests to my address below. John Sutton (sutton@olin.lanl.gov) Los Alamos Nat'l Lab (505) 667-3623 P.O. Box 1663 MS H820 Los Alamos, NM 87545 "Symbolic representation of quantitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor importance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This document contains a summary of information obtained from USENET articles about the NeWS and X window systems and responses to my request to USENET readers for opinions about X and NeWS. The comments summarized here are condensation of the opinions of the authors of the USENET articles. I make no claim as to the correctness of their opinions. The following is simply a tally of the preferences stated in the USENET articles comparing X and NeWS. This is raw data and does not take into account how the case was stated. Pro X Pro NeWS Undecided Info Only 5 11 3 3 This section shows the tally of preferences from those who seemed or were known to have experience with both window systems and were providing more than just a "gut feeling" about which window system they preferred. Pro X Pro NeWS Undecided 2 4 1 What did they say? This section is a summary of what people are saying about the two window systems. In a few places I have inserted my own comments, these will be found in the square brackets []. Note that the number of statement roughly reflects the preferences listed above. Pro X * X has the lead in the market place * Toolkit lives with client * X is in the public domain * Application will be more portable to other machines * Wider range of platforms to run on * X is superior in performance * X will prevail in the short term (1-3 years) * Fits with existing technology, easy to port, could get very high performance Pro NeWS * Easier to program with NeWS, including shorter codes, lower levels of frustration, and interactive/object oriented development environment * NeWS can do non-rectangular windows * Better use of communication bandwidth * Toolkit lives with server [a changed widget - changes for all clients] * NeWS is more hardware independent (arbitrary spatial and color resolution) * NeWS is technologically superior * NeWS will soon be part of AT&T's System V for all the world to have (hence in the public domain) * NeWS is more powerful * Can dynamically download application into server (but this is only occasionally useful) * NeWS is more widely use at LANL * NeWS is a better technical solution * NeWS requires only one font file for each font regardless of size and orientation * NeWS is very easy to port * NeWS has a very clean "virtual event" mechanism * NeWS will supersede X in the long term due to its more abstract device with higher functionality and arbitrarily high spatial and color resolution, its "future-proof" * NeWS allows you to lay down site rules for scroll bars, windows, icons, cursors, etc. without having to bow to the design decisions taken about the server * NeWS is not slow General * The best thing to do is to pick a high level toolkit and ignore what window system is used, counting on it being ported to new window systems as they come along * X is C based and NeWS is Postscript based [note: NeWS has a C toolkit layer] * Each has a few unique characteristics outside the vast majority of qualities they have in common * Performance is not an issue ... performance can be distributed to the best place * X is pixel based, NeWS is stencil/paint based * X provides a procedural interface, NeWS provides a programming interface It is my general impression that the major points that were being made in the articles summarized above are: * X is currently more widely accepted than NeWS and will probably be the standard at least in the short term * NeWS is technically superior to X but current implementations display poor performance, however, NeWS is expected to become more popular in the long term. * The major differences between the two window systems are: (1) where the division between client and server is made (client does most window management in X where as NeWS relegates most windowing tasks to the server) (2) the degree of device independence (NeWS using a more abstract device) and (3) X provides a protocol interface to the server and NeWS provides an object oriented programming language interface to the server allowing dynamic loading of server functions.