Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!gatech!emory!stiatl!meo
From: meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Contents of windows
Keywords: LoTech
Message-ID: <4434@stiatl.UUCP>
Date: 28 Apr 89 15:27:08 GMT
Organization: Sales Technologies Inc., a teeny little company in the existance of creation...
Lines: 26

In article <4009@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
| In article <466@esosun.UUCP>, smithey@esosun.UUCP (Brian Smithey) writes:
| > In article <3985@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
| > >Now I may be dim, but I don't see how the lack of a guaranteed backing store
| > >leads to the increased portability of X.
| 
| > >I find it hard to imagine a hardware system that can support X that doesn't
| > >have memory to burn.
| 
| > How about the servers for non-virtual memory micros, such as the Amiga
| > and Mac?
| 
| That's an interesting comparison, since the Amiga windowing system does
| guarantee a backing-store for all windows. If Intuition can do it, why
| not X? Particularly since with Intuition the Amiga is both the client and
| the server...

Excuse this lo-tech intrusion, but what about all the 386 systems, running both
DOS and Unix (or even - gak - the O word)? And X Display Stations, such as the
XDS terminals from Visual? Assuming you could put "memory to burn" into the XDS
and related terminals, the price would impinge into the workstation range.
Somewhere down the road, it may be reasonable to expect everything that might
run X to have display backing-store, but not now. Sure, I realize what this
means, as I write widgets & applications. But that's reality...

-Miles O'Neal (gatech!stiatl!meo)