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