Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!hplabs!hpda!hp-sde!hpfcdc!hpfclp!diamant From: diamant@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM (John Diamant) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: is news loosing the battle? Message-ID: <10250002@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM> Date: 4 Jul 88 17:25:12 GMT References:Organization: HP SDE, Fort Collins, CO Lines: 102 > 2) The next questions are : what is the staying power of > X given NeWS' availability on similar platforms? Will the > future simply be NeWS/X window managers or just one or the > other? I don't think too many people are arguing that X11 > is technically better ... rather more people tend to argue > the reverse (surprisingly even some of the X folks concede > the point) ... Whoa, there. Interesting that you chose to post this in a NeWS only group. In an X group, I'm sure you'd get quite a bit of disagreement on this. Before I begin, let me say that I'm in the X camp myself (I'm an experienced X programmer, have seen NeWS and believe I understand the basic model, but am not a NeWS programmer, so feel free to correct any technical errors regarding NeWS -- which I'm sure you would even without an invitation :-) Both NeWS and X have technical advantages, but I don't believe one is fundamentally superior to the other. However, X has from the beginning, been a completely open system, whereas NeWS has been an expensive, licensed piece of software until the introduction of the AT&T NeWS distribution. Now that NeWS will be more freely available, NeWS and X can compete on equal footing. Until now, it was a simple choice: do you want a proprietary system which one vendor is trying to foist on the world (NeWS) or a multi-vendor, open system, which has been freely available from the very start (X). NeWS advantages over X: high power imaging model (2D) using absolute dimensions, rather than pixels non-rectangular windows Postscript available Toolkits can be interpreted in the server, and thus substituted out from under the application mimimal traffic between client and server disadvantages of NeWS relative to X: requires relatively powerful NeWS server -- a NeWS terminal will be more expensive than an X terminal programming process context switching and partitioning between client and server is a PAIN for the progammer. programming in Postscript is a pain (of course, Sun provides a C translator so this isn't that big a problem). Now, let's examine the NeWS advantages for a moment and see how important they are. Regarding the imaging model, it is only 2D, and X is getting the 3D graphics extensions defined as a standard extensions, so any vendor with good hardware for graphics will probably support it. The issue of absolute dimensions and font scaling is a real one, though, of course, there are workarounds in a pixel based system (adjusting depending on the screen size). Non-rectangular windows is "gee whiz," but frankly, I don't care about that at all. Other than having round clocks, I just don't see this as a big deal. Postscript will be available on X as well, thanks to Display Postscript and some public Postscript previewers. (please note my distinction of the imaging model and just having Postscript -- this item addresses the display of Postscript and the output language only) The ability to have interpretive toolkits which can be swapped is useful, but there are other ways to accomplish this in X as well (using dynamic loading, for instance). Probably the most significant difference between X and NeWS is the traffic between client and server. First of all, Scheifler wrote a paper about why the traffic breakdown wouldn't be as good as the claims (because the communication for even simple operations like menus would be higher than expected). Second of all, it doesn't really matter! I'm a network administrator and I have some experience on this subject. Lan bandwidth is rarely the bottleneck in communications between two machines. We run diskless (including remote swap), remote X, etc. and the volume of traffic is just never that high (typically under 5% of lan utilization). Also, most X servers run with Unix Domain sockets when running locally, so lan overhead isn't a big issue. The only issue that remains is the performance in terms of throughput on the lan. We are already at the point where lan performance is within the same ballpark as disk transfer rates, so it isn't that big a deal, and we're getting faster lan technology too. The only time this will really matter is for non-local lans, like SLIP remote links or over low-speed remote channels. In that case, I concede that NeWS has an advantage, but that is probably only a small percent of the use of either NeWS or X, and running at 9600 baud over SLIP for X will still be acceptable, I believe. Basically, the assumptions that X used were that a high-speed byte stream was available between client and server and that the client was a more powerful machine than the display server. NeWS uses a different set of assumptions (or at least it shines in a different environment). NeWS is best when the link speed is low and the client and server are roughly the same power. That means if you have a Sun workstations at home, then you are probably best off running NeWS remotely, but if you have a PC or a custom window terminal at your desk, you're better off running X. > One more note : I tend to think that those companies that > offer both systems are in a much better position than those > companies only offering X... This is probably true, at least until things settle out. Disclaimer: These opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Hewlett-Packard. John Diamant Software Development Environments Hewlett-Packard Co. ARPA Internet: diamant@hpfclp.sde.hp.com Fort Collins, CO UUCP: {hplabs,hpfcla}!hpfclp!diamant