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From: borsburn@mcs.kent.edu (Bret Orsburn)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.apps,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: DOOM for X
Date: 16 Mar 1994 22:27:39 GMT
Organization: Kent State University
Lines: 42
Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <2m814r$bnp@news.mcs.kent.edu>
References: <hastyCMGpA7.Gu5@netcom.com> <2lo4m0$sdt@bosnia.pop.psu.edu> <SJA.94Mar12174713@gamma.hut.fi> <2m0h7a$3ck@u.cc.utah.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: mcs.kent.edu
In article <2m0h7a$3ck@u.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) writes:
>
>(3) The client/server distinctions are fictional; I have a lab
> full of NCR X terminals (now an AT&T X terminals I guess)
> that support developement and download of clients to run in
> the terminal (server) address space. Thinking about it a
> minute should convince you that this is the only way to do a
> window manager, and an enlightened programmer would probably
> implement an RPC mechanism for widget drawing the same way
> so that look-n-feel(tm) would rely on which window manager
> got downloaded.
>
But if you think about it for two minutes instead of one, you might
conclude otherwise.
Whatever else it may be, a window manager is an application program.
An application program needs an application run-time environment, and
for an X application that environment is probably going to be UNIX.
So, to provide a general solution for local clients, your X Terminal
has to provide a UNIX application run-time environment (including all
of the application libraries your local clients might need).
That ratchets your system design a large notch closer to being a workstation.
(In fact, the only thing that distinguishes this design from a workstation
is the compromises you make to a "real" UNIX environment to save costs.
Those are the same compromises that all of those enlightened programmers
are going to come back and tell you about later.)
You may just have designed away the cost/performance advantage you had
by building an X terminal instead of a workstation.
And, just to make things interesting, you just designed an open system
instead of a closed system. I hope you're prepared to go into the programming
support business.
---
Bret Orsburn
borsburn@mcs.kent.edu