Re: Snappy GUI response

On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 01:34:04PM -0700, David Jeske wrote:
|                           ... X was designed when networked terminals
| (Xterms) hooked up to central servers (mainframes) was an important
| configuration.

I was in one of the groups at DEC that developed the original sample
server, so I can confirm that the implementors had considerable
experience with PCs and definitely kept PC- and workstation-class
systems in mind from very early on.

I remember it was cause for considerable celebration when the
implementation reached the point that it could outperform the Mac on
some key interaction benchmarks, despite running on old workstation
hardware that was arguably slower than the Mac.

So in short, I don't think history supports the idea that X11 was
designed just for thin-client systems.

(For full disclosure:  I'm not one of the implementors mentioned above.
I just worked with them, mostly on 3D and graphics accelerator support.)

Allen