🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9617@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>, alan@jane.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Alan S. Mazer) writes:
> Hola.  For all you X types, can someone tell me the difference between X 11,
> X 11.2, and X Prerelease?  I understand that X 11.2 (following X 11.1 and
> X 11.0?) is now available.  But my Masscomp salesman tells me "X 11" is _not_
[ ....the rest deleted......]

I am presently running Masscomp's first release. (Not a Beta release.)
They (like many other vendors) have their own release numbering systems.
I honestly believe that vendors do this for their own (good) internal reasons 
and not to confuse their customers.  

Masscomp calls this X11 Release 1.0, and it is based on the MIT/Athena release 
1 of X11.  Its reasonably good, and I am pleased that they put it out. The 
manuals are good, and the installation was complex but well documented, my 
only regret was that I forgot to insist that it come on 9 track tape. 
There are many other vendors who don't yet have any supported versions of 
X11 out yet (but plenty of hot air.)

I have it on reasonably good authority that Masscomp will shortly 
ship their release 1.1 which will be based on Version 2. Masscomp's 
release 1 does not include some things that I would have liked to see
but then I am very much a novice Xer..  We are using it, and learning.

It seems that either you got stale (old) information, or your salesman
is not up to speed.  In either case, it appears that you are not getting
very good support from your sales person.

There is a news group for Massscomp related stuff which you might
want to cross post to. It is "comp.sys.masscomp"

The current release from Masscomp supports GA-1000 (Aurora) and GA-600
(Integral) graphics devices. They swear that the GA-800's will be supported
real soon now, and we as users should continue to encourage them to do so.

The 1.0 release from Masscomp requires that you configure each graphics
device (display) on your system as either an X device or a Masscomp
graphics device. This is in the kernel and as such, you have to reboot 
with a different kernel if you want to change from X to MGI applications,
or move to another display.

They do provide a set of MGI compatibility library functions so that
many applications can simply be recompiled with the new lib and then
run under the X11 device.

You can mix X11 display devices and MGI devices on the same system, but
you can not change from one to the other as you can for instance
with the MIT release 2 on a 3/50.  On the otherhand, they have
implemented a fast "local" interface between the clients and the
server through shared memory which eliminates the overhead of network 
software for applications where both are on the same machine.

[If these are opinions, they must be mine. This orgainzation is too 
anarchistic to have policy, never mind collective opinions. I am an
active member of the Masscomp Users Society, and an active user of
Masscomp's products.]
-- 
Dale Chayes Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University
Route 9W, Palisades, N.Y.  10964	dale@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu
voice:	(914) 359-2900 extension 434	fax: (914) 359-6817


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