RE: Create Graphical interface

Some opinions, but first, a disclosure: I have never programmed with X11.

Opinions:

1. Yes, the libraries are very old, and this is by design: "Do not add new functionality unless you know of some real application that will require it." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11#Principles. So rather than saying "old," I should say "stable."
2. As far as I know, KDE and Gnome run on X11, and there are a good bunch of tools to develop user interfaces.
3. Are there any benchmarks regarding scalability? I can see some reasons why X11 user interfaces may not be scalable, but I wonder if there are any hard numbers out there. I think X11 is probably less scalable that at web interface, but more scalable that let's say VNC.

-----Original Message-----
From: java400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:java400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 10:12 AM
To: Java Programming on and around the iSeries / AS400
Subject: Re: Create Graphical interface

john e skrev den 06-02-2008 14:36:

X-Windows works over a network, but it is not scalable to hundreds of users because of technical reasons (it's architecture is not scalable). Also, unix is not like the as/400, and having one program (job/process) running for each interactive user is not a good idea in a unix environment. For unix type servers a client/server approach is best for scalability. And X-Windows is difficult to program for because the underlying base libraries are quite old (25 years).

Could you please elaborate a bit on the "it is not scalable because it
is not scalable"? Also I do not understand the rest of your arguments.

So IMHO X-Windows is only useful on the as/400 (PASE) if you have to run an existing unix utility or program which happens to use X-Windows.

Which we most likely do namely the JVM. I will try one of these days to
see if Swing is available.