Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: A Thought on X Terminals
Message-ID: <37165@think.UUCP>
Date: 7 Mar 89 23:58:49 GMT
References: <8903011944.AA04616@torel.uit.no> <4424@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: news@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 26

In article <4424@pt.cs.cmu.edu> dac@f.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Daniel Christian) writes:
>  Applications need to be efficient.  Inefficiency unnecessarily
>strains the server and slows down the system.  Toolkits were
>originally billed as being more efficient than simple Xlib code.  Is
>this really true?  What more can be done?

>  From doing some server development, I noticed that toolkit
>applications imeadiately store one or more images to the server.

It depends on how you are measuring efficiency.  In the case of
distributed applications (all X-based programs are distributed
applications), you must also consider communications efficiency.  One
way to improve communications effiency is to prevent redundant use of
the communications medium, by storing data at the recipient.  X
provides mechanisms to support this, but it uses resources in the
server.  So, the application or toolkit developer must decide whether
to trade off server resources for communication throughput.  NeWS goes
even further in supporting this, by allowing arbitrary Postscript
programs to be stored in the server for later invocation; again,
you're depending upon server power to reduce your network use.

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar