Xref: utzoo comp.windows.news:586 comp.windows.x:4150 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!rutgers!sunybcs!boulder!unisyn!matheny From: matheny@Unisyn.COM (John Matheny) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x Subject: Re: is news loosing the battle? Summary: NeWS has what I want Message-ID: <400@unisyn.COM> Date: 7 Jul 88 04:54:46 GMT References:<10250002@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM> <17063@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <23656@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Reply-To: matheny@Unisyn.COM (John Matheny) Organization: Unisyn, Inc. - Boulder, CO Lines: 55 As an application developer, these are some of the attributes that I considered when evaluating the X Window System and NeWS: Portability. I want to minimize the amount of effort it takes to port applications from one platform to another. Therefore, I want to use a window system that exists on all of platforms in which I am interested. The X Window System seems to have an upper hand in this at the moment. However, I believe that this may change when X.11/NeWS is in UNIX V.4 and when vendors stop telling and start listening to their customers who understand the issues. Device independence. I want the window system to insulate my applications from having to know about the basic characteristics of the display device: output resolution, bit-mapped displays versus printers, keyboard mapping, pointing devices, color availability, etc. This lets me spend more time concentrating on the functionality of my application rather than its environment. The PostScript imaging model in NeWS supports this very well; the X Window System does not. Performance in a network environment. I want my application's user interface to perform well in a wide variety of configurations: same machine, machines separated by a high-speed LAN, machines separated by a phone line. Therefore, I want the flexibility of putting all or part of my application's user interface, both input- and output- related components, close to the user where it can be the most responsive. If I use NeWS I have that flexibility. With the X Window System I am stuck with everything residing on the client. I believe that dynamic server programmability, whether it is a window system server, a compute server, or a database management server, is a key to performance. Development environment. I want the window system to include tools and/or techniques that facilitate software development. I have found that all of the functions and their arguments in the X Window System and toolkits to be at least as compilicated of a "language" to learn than the equivalent in PostScript/NeWS. I was able to become proficient in PostScript/NeWS in a very short amount of time and found a number of features that make it very attractive: it has an interpreter that I can type to and get immediate feedback; it lets me do "late binding" of variables and even functions, making my software both more simple and more general; both the input model and the output model are wonderfully flexible; and the object-oriented programming features of NeWS keep my software organized, well-structured, and extensible. I haven't had any difficulty in switching between C-based application programming and NeWS-based user interface programming. In summary, NeWS meets my window system requirements much better than the X Window System. NeWS offers a programmable server for dynamic extensibility and superior performance in a network environment, features a very powerful stencil/paint graphics model that is device- and resolution-independent, and facilitates development with an interactive, object-oriented environment. All of these are features that I want when building state-of-the-art application user interfaces. -- John Matheny Internet: matheny@Unisyn.COM UUCP: uunet!unisyn!matheny Unisyn, Inc., 3300 Mitchell Lane, Boulder, CO 80301 +1 303 443 7878