Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!encore!bzs
From: bzs@Encore.COM (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: A Thought on X Terminals
Message-ID: <4997@xenna.Encore.COM>
Date: 27 Feb 89 20:52:27 GMT
References: <8902262128.AA04910@devnull.sun.com>
Organization: Encore Computer Corp, Marlboro, MA
Lines: 127
In-reply-to: dshr@SUN.COM's message of 26 Feb 89 17:45:18 GMT
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.15 of Tue Jun  9 1987 on xenna (berkeley-unix)


>Current X clients CRASH when they get a Alloc error.

No one has claimed otherwise, even the vendors I've spoken to. No one
has claimed X is mature and finished etc etc. Although the problems
you detail later do indicate that it's not a trivial fix there are
still ways to deal with it.

And how much is your summary grounded in a very unfortunate window of
technology where we're still stuck with $35 1Mb chips and a flat
technology curve? What would 16Mb chips and/or the price dropping to
$5/chip do to all these arguments (agreed, that's not where we are,
but we're *both* doing some forecasting, no?)

>X terminals with no VM are likely to generate Alloc errors frequently.

Interesting claim, we've never had it happen here and I'm sure you'll
hear that from others. I completely believe it can happen, I only
dispute the word "frequently". Have you ever tried one of these
terminals? I've seen some pretty fancy environments run on them, not
terribly fast, but I've never seen this happen.

>For example,  the X server on the DEC PMAX in their suite at Usenix
>when I used it had been used to run a lot of sophisticated X clients
>simultaneously.  It was 17meg big (resident set size was 7meg).  Of course,
>this was pre-production software and it may have had leaks,  but how many
>X terminals will have even half that much memory?

And you don't mention they were color servers (I was in there
also)...so far the X terminals I've seen are all mono and I'd
certainly look carefully at a color station for just that reason.

Besides, I'm running X11R3 on my (mono) 3/60 right now with a bunch of
windows and the server is 832K, gee, quite a discrepancy, the X
terminals I've seen had 1.5MB. I do believe you saw the server run up
that high, but I don't believe it's representative of the type of
person who would (or should) buy an X-terminal.

Look, anyone who buys a $2000 X-terminal expecting a high performance
workstation (or even medium, heck, a 3/50 or uVax-II is much more
powerful) is a fool and doomed to serious disappointment.

X-terminals, at this point, mainly buy you one thing: Software (and
other, eg. training) compatability with real workstations so you can
unify your environment while still keeping the cost per seat down.

It's a good excuse to not keep people on dumb ascii terminals forever
even tho you can't in your wildest dreams justify going ~$10K for a
workstation for every desk. It's close enough to the price of a dumb
ascii terminal to consider.

And they do work, maybe not at the outer limits of windowtude, but for
the typical day to day chores of many people (eg. mail, text editing,
the sorts of things business people do with Macs or PCs or Unix.) The
people selling these things aren't as stupid as you seem to believe
(or do you think no one would notice if they don't work?)

The same sort of problems (no virtual memory, just brain-death on
running out of memory) exist on PC's and MacIntoshes. Would you argue
that here it is, 1983, and they're doomed to failure? For
straightforward applications with simple goals they're "good enough".

If there's one thing I've learned in (well) over a decade of this
business it's that "good enough" tends to be very successful, and
"technically superior" but late/unavailable/expensive solutions tend
to lose, despite all the screaming.

In fact I think that sums up the whole battle between NeWS and X (for
example), NeWS was technically superior in many ways (not all), but X
was "good enough", and it was there, available, and cheap. Maybe
someday if decent $3000 VM/Unix workstations become available with X
they'll be superior and all that. But it's not shocking that a $2000
systems has limitations when compared to a $10K or $20K machine, who
would say otherwise?

Same thing with PC's and a lot of other "obviously inferior"
solutions, they're *good enough* to get the work done for a lot of
folks, aficianados be damned.

I can certainly see some workstation vendors picking up this sort of
FUD (Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt) party line (it might work now, but
*someday soon* you'll be sorry...) for obvious reasons.

But it's foolish, unnecessary and counter-productive.

Within reasonable parameters [I am quite certain David Rosenthal
exaggerates his case] the argument is true for many classes of users
and *must* be told.

Yes, people who *needed* workstations (and there are a lot of them)
but decided to buy an X terminal merely because they're cheaper are in
for a shock.  People who bought X terminals because the other choice
was dumb ascii terminals will be satisfied and even pleased.  And when
they stop feeling pleased there's nothing standing between them and
nirvana but $$.

From the point of view of the workstation vendors, even if they stand
to lose a few bucks (short-range) on people buying X terminals, it's
IN THE WORKSTATION VENDOR'S INTEREST for people to buy these terminals
in the right instances.

The reasoning is that it legitimizes the interface, it's no longer the
more fortunate types in the back labs running windowing software, it's
everyone.

The software interface becomes unified and the organization is no
longer required to either buy two software worlds (one windowed,
another aimed at dumb ascii terminals) or, in my experience, to refuse
to invest in window stuff more than the minimum necessary since "most
of the users here have dumb terminals" (not at Encore, tho it's not
that far from the truth when you count the business side, we also have
lots of Suns here.)

And as they outgrow these X terminals they'll move on to real
workstations if need be, and (if the truth gets known) they'll
probably realize that if they move to a unified window environment
they'd still better buy quite a few real workstations, because for
many folks the terminals won't cut it.

But, only the truth will set us free, not hype.

Look, we're not even a few percent of the market (the whole Unix
market), let's not fight over the scraps, tell me how X is better than
a 3278 (or a PC or a Mac)...now *that's* interesting, cuz there's a
$100B market behind that argument...familiarity breeds contempt.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||