Xref: utzoo comp.sys.misc:1786 comp.misc:3782
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bywater!acheron!clarke
From: clarke@acheron.UUCP (Ed Clarke)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.misc
Subject: Re: The NeXT machine has been announced! (long)
Message-ID: <254@acheron.UUCP>
Date: 14 Oct 88 15:28:52 GMT
References: <5806@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Lines: 38

From article <5806@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>,by elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green):
> Nit #2: Bemoaning "No X windows!" is silly. From what I hear,
> X-windows is slow, clumsy, huge, and, generally, Typical University
> Software ("Free software that's too expensive to use"). The NeXT
> windowing system looks a lot more user-friendly, and probably is
> faster, more compact, and more efficient.

You hear wrong (sort of).  It IS huge (68 megabytes of source including
documentation), but it's not slow.  A lot of the stuff you can ignore.
Who needs cyrilic fonts?  You don't need the documentation once you've
created hardcopy output ( except for man pages ).  Source doesn't have
to be kept online either.  I don't think that there is much more than
10-20 meg of libraries and executables once you're finished compiling.
( All those little demos and things add up fast - the server and xterm
probably come to less than 1 meg with a minimum set of fonts )

It is truly difficult to program at the lowest level, but toolkits 
are available in many flavors to make your life easier (these kits
come with the X source).  Only someone into S&M programs in machine
code or low level X if they don't have to.

My source code is at work, but the 'vendor' stuff is all in seperate 
libraries and did not seem to be very large.  If you're not using
a xxx86 machine, it should be portable to whatever you're on.  It
might be possible to go to an Intel system if your compiler is good
enough.  NeWS is nice, but only works on Sun's.  NeXT's are probably
good, but the same is true.

I understand that there is a version of X for MS/DOS.  Since that
system only supports 640k, X can't be all that huge.  The vendor
for that is Locus(?) and it requires an Excelan(?) card?  I don't
use DOS much anymore and just heard it in passing.  Check the X
newsgroups for real information.

Sorry for the large posting, but I like X ...  
-- 
Ed Clarke
uunet!bywater!acheron!clarke