Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bu.edu!bu-cs!xylogics!world!madd
From: madd@world.std.com (jim frost)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Speeding up Sun 4 X?
Keywords: Megabytes, memory hog
Message-ID: <1990Jan4.022125.18804@world.std.com>
Date: 4 Jan 90 02:21:25 GMT
References: <33410@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <9001021710.AA11011@dart.cs.byu.edu> <50334@bbn.COM>
Organization: Software Tool & Die
Lines: 32

news@bbn.COM (News system owner ID) writes:
>I expect the X servers from MIT to be a bit big, because they are
>demonstrations of new ideas

There are no new ideas in X (in fact it's missing quite a few fairly
old ideas supported by other graphical environments) except, perhaps,
that it's available to anyone for the asking.  The OpenWindows
environment, on the other hand, demonstrated quite a few interesting
ideas.

Given that the OW environment is extensible and that applications USE
that extensibility, it's not surprising that the server grows quite
large.  In a comparable case, consider if X applications loaded
much of themselves into the server instead of running as clients.
Pretty soon the server would be quite large (and your ethernet would
be much happier than it is with many X applications :-).

This isn't to say that I don't think the OW environment could be
better done, just that OW is much more novel than X.  X is much better
suited to a lean server environment and high network bandwidth (which
is what we have now on LANs) while OW runs much better on lower
bandwidth network connections but needs quite a bit of resources on
the server.  Which is best depends on your environment.  Me, I like
the OW idea but I like the fact that X is available for the effort of
going and getting it.  And since few people I know have a 12mb
workstation at their desk....

That said, back to your regularly scheduled program, already in
progress.

jim frost
jimf@saber.com