Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!amdahl!pyramid!prls!philabs!sbcs!root From: root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: X vs NeWS - was --> is news loosing the battle? Summary: NFS/NeWS without ref port Message-ID: <1396@sbcs.sunysb.edu> Date: 15 Jul 88 00:14:27 GMT References: <20091@wlbr.EATON.COM> <10250003@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM> Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook Lines: 73 In article <10250003@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM>, diamant@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM (John Diamant) writes: > to get some of the vendors to look at NeWS was to provide it on the AT&T > tape in the X11/NeWS merge (due to the large source licensing fee). Until it > was clear that X11 was here to stay, Sun kept trying to make NeWS the standard > and kill X. Only when it was clear that it wasn't going to work, did they join I've been to a couple rah-rah seminars for NeWS; its creators have shown considerable restraint towards bashing X. More so than I would have if I created a great product like NeWS. As for the "large source license fee", one hat I wear besides the one at Stony Brook is that of a small company. My partners and I were able to afford a NeWS license - I can't see why anyone else would have a problem. Especially HP :-). I've not spoken to anyone on the NeWS project that had the attitude that they're out to build NeWS to foist it on the world, kill X11, etc. It seems that they have their view of what a network window system should look like and they've been pursuing it. > the bandwagon. > > > I think sun's attitude seems to more "may the best > > one win". sun's policy on NeWS is pretty much like NFS , if you want > > a reference source kit you hand over your XXXX amount of dollars and > > you get it. > > Yes, that is true now. However, it is virtually impossible to implement either > NFS or NeWS without the reference source. > Untrue about NFS. We implemented an NFS client for the Amiga from the protocol spec. No problem at all. We will shortly introduce an NFS server product that was built, once again, from the publicly available specs. NeWS would be a tougher nut to crack, but I think it is doable. I've done my share of Sun bashing, but one area you really can't touch them on is they do make their technology available, and for pretty reasonable fees. > > I believe I have seen X product announcements for X on an IBM PC (8088). I'm > pretty sure I've seen recommended configurations as low as 286 at least. I'm > thinking in terms of dedicated X or NeWS terminals. The problem with NeWS > terminals is that someone might try to run large portions of their program > in the terminal, and it won't be able to handle it. It could probably handle > reasonable client/server mixes, but there is nothing to prevent a NeWS program > from attempting to run almost entirely in the server, which I'm sure would > fail miserably on a NeWS terminal. NeWS running on the Amiga isn't terribly fast compared to even NeWS on a 3/50. The important point to remember here is that a small machine running X or NeWS is delivering price performance rather than graphics performance. As to whether one needs less machine to run X, here is a suprising result: The alpha binary for one X11 server on the Amiga is actually 40Kbytes larger than our current NeWS binary. The performance seems to be similar. Both ports require similar machine resources to run, eg ~2-3 mBytes ram, ~10 mBytes fonts, etc. Both ports are roughly at the same stage of maturity. Draw your own conclusions - the one I like is that it is just too early to say that either X or NeWS inherently require less machine than the other. > John Diamant > Software Development Environments > Hewlett-Packard Co. ARPA Internet: diamant@hpfclp.sde.hp.com > Fort Collins, CO UUCP: {hplabs,hpfcla}!hpfclp!diamant Let me just say that despite my obvious bias towards NeWS, I most certainly not anti X. All of this X vs NeWS vs etc nervous energy ought to be directed towards standardizing user interfaces so that we can get on with getting reasonable computers into mass markets. In the end, does the customer really care whether it is PostScript, X RPC, etc on the wire? Of course not. Rick Spanbauer SUNY/Stony Brook