Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!rws
From: rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: What number of windows is reasonable?
Message-ID: <8902021311.AA06916@EXPIRE.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 2 Feb 89 13:11:35 GMT
References: <690@acorn.co.uk>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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    Is this contrary to ``the X philosophy''?

The X philosophy is "mechanism, not policy", which translates to
"here's some rope, bet you'll hang yourself" :-)

How many windows (or more generally how many resources) you consume
will affect the number of servers you can run against.  An X terminal
with .5Mb of memory just won't be able to handle very much, period.
Some of the early product application builders were seen creating
hierarchies of 3000 windows, which is not hard to do with an Xt-based
toolkit if you aren't careful.  There are definite performance problems
(and memory limitations) with huge numbers of windows.  One reaction
to this in the Xt world has been the design (from DEC) of "gadgets"
(windowless widgets).  Formal inclusion of this mechanism into Xt is
now under review in the X Consortium.

The answer to your question is rather difficult, there's no single answer.
You have to understand what application mix you think your "customer" will be
using, and how many resources those applications will consume.  You also have
to understand what range of servers you care about.