Silly comparison between W1R4 and X11R5

First of all, W and X are intended (or have evolved) for slightly different purposes. X is a heavy-weight networked graphics system whereas W is a intended to be small, fairly portable and fast. It's main goal is to be easy to program for.

Window managers

Window redraws

Messages

Graphics subsystem

As X is older, widely used and commercially supported, it understandably supports graphics hardware better, has more complete graphics contexts and function sets. W graphics functions have the following deficiencies at the moment:

X11R5 features missing in W1R4

On MiNT, the statically linked monochrome W server is 100KB and X11 500KB. When running, W server uses about 300KB and X11 900KB of ram. Statically linked Wlib binaries are about 50-90KB, Xlib ones 120-300KB, W Toolkit ones 100-200KB and Athena widget set ones 400-800KB. With shared libraries the library sizes wouldn't matter that much though.


puujalka@modeemi.cs.tut.fi