[Info-vax] Windows X server?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 9/17/2023 6:03 PM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Den 2023-09-17 kl. 18:46, skrev Arne Vajhøj:
>> On 9/17/2023 4:41 AM, issinoho wrote:
>>> Which (if any) Windows based X server are people using to run CDE
>>> from their OpenVMS instance? Paid or free. I've had mixed experiences
>>> with MobaXterm which does work for discrete apps however getting a
>>> reliable full screen session doesn't really cut it.
>>
>> When (approx. once per year) I want to run something X on
>> VMS then I use MobaXTerm.
> 
> X is dead, Web/HTML is what is used for applications today.

Web is the default GUI today.

The GUI for the typical business application (the stuff that
35 years ago would run on VMS TDMS/FMS/DECForms or similar for
other platforms and 25 years ago would run as VB6 or Delphi
Windows applications) is web based today and have been
for many years.

But client applications are still used on non-server OS
(which does not include VMS!).

Among other needs there is the little detail that
you can't do the web browser as a web application!
For all those web applications to work there need to be
a browser application running on the client system.

Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, Linux etc. all need
a GUI framework for client usage.

For Linux (and other *nix) that means either X or
Wayland at the bottom of the GUI stack - typical with
Gnome & GTK or KDE & Qt at the upper level.

So X or Wayland is still relevant for some platforms.
But IMHO not important for VMS even though it is nice to
have.

Personally I have never liked X. I failed miserable
learning X 30 years ago. It was probably a mistake
to pick Macro-32 as the language for X. :-)

Arne