Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!diamond.bbn.com!mlandau From: mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: Window systems should not be substitutes for decent environments Keywords: X11 NeWS C interpreters threads Message-ID: <13337@granite.BBN.COM> Date: 7 Jan 90 22:48:41 GMT References: <4458@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <8912162135.AA03025@iris.rand.org> <4290@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <4392@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <2405@bacchus.dec.com> Sender: news@bbn.com Lines: 42 joel@decwrl.dec.com (Joel McCormack) writes: >Most of the points about NeWS's ``technical superiority'' >are really complaints about UNIX and C in disguise. You should >certainly complain that your programming language and environment >doesn't give you support for the kinds of things you want to do, but >don't get confused and complain that the lack of such support is a >problem inherent to X. This is a crock. The basic point is this: the X11 protocol simply does not allow me, as an application writer, to decide what parts of my application belong close to the user (in the server, where they can provide fast feedback, etc.) and what parts belong in the client. The only way for me to change this is to write my own server extensions and only allow my application to run with servers that have my extensions. In effect, I have to get into the X server business if I want to be able to do certain things. NeWS allows me to decide what parts of my application belong in the server, and to download them into the server myself, at runtime. I never have to worry about whether a particular extension or facility is present, because I can *make* it present, in any NeWS server, at any time, using a well-defined protocol (which happens to be based on PostScript, with all the nice things that implies about imaging models, etc.) There's also an argument that the X11 protocol does not allow me, as a user, to change what parts of my user-interface look like and have the change apply to all applications. That argument is also true, but only partially. It relies on all NeWS applications using the same server-resident tools for the user interface (they don't as yet) and it assumes that I don't have dynamically linked toolkits on the X11 client side that I can replace with different toolkits for a different UI policy (I don't know of such a thing for X yet, but the N3 project at AT&T sounds like a good start). Now, do we all understand why NeWS is a more powerful idea than X? Because runtime extensibility is good, and it's GUARANTEED by the very definition of NeWS, and it's NOT guaranteed by the very definition of X11. -- Matt Landau The happiest cold and lonely guy mlandau@bbn.com stuck in the Yukon without a dog.