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From: davidh@ic.Berkeley.EDU (David S. Harrison)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: Is SUN a "PURE PLAYER" in window systems - SunView or OpenWindows???
Summary: Debate
Keywords: X, NeWS, Toolkits
Message-ID: <20966@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 2 Jan 90 03:00:24 GMT
References: <8912302010.AA11723@super.super.org> <HNWF05ggpc2@ficc.uu.net>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: davidh@ic.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (David S. Harrison)
Followup-To: comp.windows.news
Organization: U.C. Berkeley EECS CAD Group
Lines: 44

In article <HNWF05ggpc2@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>Not at all. The things that I particularly dislike about X are:
>
>	It requires a huge runtime overhead linked in with each program.
>	Complex policy is forced on the application programmer.
>	A certain programming model is forced on the application programmer.
>	It's very very large.
>
>None of these things are true of UNIX. The runtime for a small programming
>language (say, FORTH) under UNIX is under 1K.
...
>

I am afraid I disagree with the arguments expressed here.  The problem
truely lies in toolkits and policy.  In order for memory savings to
take place, programs *must agree* to use the same features.  Otherwise,
using the NeWS paradigm, each program will download its own features
into the server and you will have a gigantic server where little or
no sharing occurs.

Furthermore, the problem is *identical* for both NeWS and X.  Both
systems provide fairly low-level user interface programming facilities.
Both systems require higher level facilities in order to quickly build
real-world user interfaces.  The solution is to have programs agree
on a toolkit.  The memory savings will be the same under both systems:

- Under NeWS, toolkit facilities will be downloaded to the server where
  possible and applications will link against a shared library for
  client side facilities.
- Under X, applications will link against a shared library for most
  toolkit functionality and may use server extensions (if present).

In both cases, applications will share the toolkit code.  The sum
of server size and client size should be roughly equivalent.
My point is that there is nothing fundamental about NeWS that makes
this problem any easier.  Furthermore, in my opinion, there are
some problems in the NeWS model that make it harder to develop
a general purpose toolkit that meets the needs of a wide range
of application developers.  I have posted these problems before
in this newsgroup so I won't repeat them here.

			David Harrison
			UC Berkeley Electronics Research Lab
			(davidh@ic.Berkeley.EDU, ...!ucbvax!ucbcad!davidh)