Subject: NeWS and X

From: Robert Scheifler <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 May 87 17:58:00 EDT

Date: Sat, 16 May 87 11:08 EDT
From: Robert Scheifler <[email-masked]>
Subject: NeWS and X
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]

    X is fast????  Give me a break.  I just saw News and X
    running side by side, News on a 160 and X on a 260.
    News was just as fast if not faster.

It is amazing how silly people can be.  Trying to make blanket
statements about X or NeWS is stupid to begin with, but comparing an
unsupported non-product with a supported product is less than sensible.

					  In particular,
    try to do the rubber-band-line tracking trick with X.

The effect was virtually instantaneous on and between GPXes, last time I
tried it.  Of course, the Sun port is less than adequate in this area
(due to a mismatch between what the vanilla X10 server would like to see
for a kernel interface and what the Sun kernel provides), but we
wouldn't want a reality like that to affect our unbiased opinion, would
we?

    Why is it that anyone who thinks they understand
    TECO and/or EMACS can build a user interface???
    I got big news for them.  If X becomes the
    defacto window standard for window systems
    you can completely kiss-off the real
    commercial marketplace.  It completely
    fulfills everyone's worst fears and nightmares
    about UNIX.

It is easy to lump lots of different things into the collective "X" and
then dump on it, just as so many do with "Unix", "AI", etc.  At the
lowest level, X Version 11 has very little to say about "user
interface".  And if you ask various vendors who have "endorsed X"
exactly what they mean, you will get very different answers.  To most it
appears to mean standardizing on a lowest level (non-UI) C programming
interface and a network protocol.  Others only care about the
programming interface, or only the network protocol.  Others want to
standardize on a C toolkit.  Off-hand, I don't know of ANY company
endorsing existing V10 (or V11) user interfaces as standards, and
certainly there are companies that are off doing their own thing here.
That is one reason WHY vendors are backing the X protocol: it doesn't
unduly restrict them in terms of user interface.  [All of this is
probably just as applicable to NeWS.]

    I am not claiming the Mac interface is perfect,
    but before you make any claims about knowing
    anything about what is going on with user
    interfaces, you better well deeply understand
    all the issues, tradeoffs, and decisions that
    when into formulating those guidelines, otherwise
    you are fooling yourself.

The same, of course, applies to claims about network-based virtual
console protocols, like X and NeWS.

				   Only  when the UNIX
    folks realize that, in fact, they really don't know
    crap about what windows are good for and will take a
    look at a system with tons of extremely consistant,
    truly window-based software will we ever see
    UNIX window systems that are worthy of the name.

The fact that you seem to view "X" as somehow synonymous with "Unix
window system" is just another indication that you are confused.