Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!apple!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!rws
From: rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Why X Windows?
Message-ID: <8904171552.AA04125@EXPIRE.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 17 Apr 89 15:52:54 GMT
References: <17319@cup.portal.com>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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    1) on a single machine what are the advantages to multiple applications
    sending messages to a window manager?

In some ways it's the other way 'round: there are no significant disadvantages,
and it permits a network split (that's the big advantage).  Explicit advantages
would have to be "compared with what?".  It depends on a fair number of
factors.

    2) over a network, why would a process on a remote CPU want to control
    a screen on my CPU?

For all the same reasons that a local process would.  For many applications,
I might prefer to run them on whatever machine will get the job done fastest.
If that happens to be a supercomputer at some remote site (or even one of my
staff's workstations :-), I'd still like to use the same windowing and graphics
as when running locally.  Or it simply might not be possible to run the
application locally.  As just one trivial example, some folks run xmh on
a remote machine, because their local machine doesn't support MH (for one
reason or another).

    Why is the X Windows method preferable to a more traditional
    client-server model,

X *is* based on a traditional client-server model.  The "traditional" database
model is not "the" definition of a client-server relationship.