Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Friday, 10 Apr 1992 23:11:23 CDT
From: <U20565@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.desqview
Subject: Re: DV/X Has 2 Strikes Against It (was Re: pcweek, what a joke!!!)
 <s1r8qINN1cs@agate.berkeley.edu>

I think you maybe missed one of the MAIN thrusts of DesqView/X. Namely it
allows a PC to become more useful on a UNIX network. All this talk of 32
bit code makes me think that people are actually going to use machines with
DV/X to start developing their large scale X-Windows programs. I rather doubt
it. DesqView has always been a niche product. Sure you find a lot of people
who know about it, but there's a hell of a LOT MORE who don't.

In fact I attended Spring COMDEX and Quarterdeck was giving demonstrations of
DV/X in conjunction with a Sun workstation. People basically were not aware of
X-Windows in any real way. When the person giving the demos asked how could a
machine run multiple copies of Lotus 1-2-3 without losing any memory, people
threw all kinds of answers from "recursion" (yeah, laugh like I did) to
"code sharing." Many people are unaware of what DesqView/X can do. Because of
this is will largely remain a niche product. And is this surprising?
Not really. If you don't have access to a network, what will you do with it?
Sure you may be able to RUN programs on one machine and display them on another
but that is not anything new. Various programs such as Close-Up and the
latest version of PC-Anywhere recently released by Symantec after its
acquisition do fine. Supporting IPX and NetBIOS networks.

The question remains, who will benefit from DV/X? Largely people who have
access to a UNIX network. Either they're PC is PART of the network. Or they
want to use SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) to do run more simplistic
X-Window programs. This is a user's perspective. If on the other hand you are
a techie, then sure I can see you wanting to learn Xlib programming in
conjunction with some toolkit. I can't see however, people pushing DV/X
because of a 16-bit compiler. If your programs require more horsepower then
maybe you need a real workstation, or at least a real operating system.
I see myself using DV/X as a learning tool. To learn Xlib programming. In
addition to SLIP. I really can't imagine full scale X-Windows development with
DV/X.

Iterating, DesqView with or without QEMM is a niche product, DV/X will be
no different. In fact to hint at DesqView's obscurity, do you know who
ORIGINALLY developed DesqView (under a slightly different name)?

IBM. Yes, IBM. IBM developed and released it as "TopView." In fact if you look
at somewhat well known Brown "Interrupt List" basically a list of documentedd
and undocumented services available from various software interrupts (APIs;
Application Program Interfaces). It basically started out I imagine as a
FAQ list. Ralf Brown maintained the list and it grew extensive to the point
that it was released as a reference book by Addison-Wesley. In it you will
note the so called "TopView/DesqView API".

Sure DesqView has gone through changes, such as being strongly coupled with
QEMM (the use of virtual DOS machines). However people have complained about
wanting to multitask for years. Sure, DesqView is not the end all product in
this category. Having this ability in the operating system (for stability's
sake would be much better). But it has been around.

Just as many people are unware of DesqView, many more people will be
unware of DesqView/X. In your case, I think you have misconstrued DV/X's real
utility. Having programs run on BIG nasty machines without straining your PC.
That's the beauty of client/server computing. Just use the 32 bit compiler on
the client machine is what I say.