Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Human vs. machine input (was: Re: Behaviour of setjmp/longjmp ...)
Message-ID: <1024@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 16 Feb 89 08:48:56 GMT
References: <25@torsqnt.UUCP> <225800127@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <7697@chinet.chi.il.us> <1016@auspex.UUCP> <36397@think.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 15

>I don't deny that this is wasteful of network and cpu resources, and
>NeWS probably allows improvement by moving some of these operations
>into the server when the client doesn't need them.  However, X is an
>important fact of life these days.

The original complaint was about time wasted "watching" for transitions
such as that; X clients don't have to waste lots of time doing that,
they are presumably blocked on a "read" or "select" or "poll" or
something such as that waiting for an event from the server.  (A
subsequent posting indicated that the problem was with DOS processes
running under VP/ix; it may well be that, as far as the DOS process
knows, it owns the whole machine - after all, it's running under DOS,
right? - and thus sits in a loop polling the keyboard.)

Furthermore, how bad a problem *is* that sort of thing?