Re: CLX speed

[John Irwin <franz!jdi@uunet.UU.NET>]

Your message:

    	What is the general difference in speed between CLX and raw X, i.e.
    how much does it cost me to be using LISP?  Would I,
    exclusively in terms of speed and without considering all the advantages of
    LISP over C, gain anything by writing a graphics interface in C and then
    writing an additional interface between my application and the interface,
    thereby reducing the number of foreign function calls to only those between
    my applicationa and its user interface?

--------

Well, CLX doesn't really need to do foreign function calls at all.  Some
implementations do because it's quicker or easier that way.  But, in essence,
CLX speaks directly over a socket to the X server without going through C.

CLX code isn't too hard to translate into Xlib, and vice versa.  My suggestion
is to try writing your graphics interface in CLX, and then translating it to C
later if you need additional performance.

You'll almost certainly be able to develop the code faster in Lisp than you
would using Xlib.

	-- John Irwin, jdi@franz.com