Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!ra!fwp1 From: fwp1@CC.MsState.Edu (Frank Peters) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: what's most important to you for R5? Keywords: Easy-to-use Message-ID: Date: 4 Jul 90 06:58:30 GMT References: <1336@pai.UUCP> Sender: fwp1@ra.MsState.Edu Lines: 105 erc@pai.UUCP (Eric Johnson) writes: > ...I > make extensive use of X and am very grateful for all the work that > has been done, so please take all the suggestions below as > constructive suggestions. I intend no flames, so please don't take > anything as such.) Yeah! What he said. > 1) Make X easier for USERS to use. That is, have less reliance on > resource files and other hard-to-understand configurations. X is > still a developer's windowing system and isn't quite there yet as > an end-user's windowing system. Perhaps a resource file editor > with a graphical interface and a LOT of on-line help would > improve things? Most users don't have the faintest idea what > a widget hierarchy is, so being able to see and modify that won't > really help much. We need something that is EASY. I agree with this wholeheartedly. While I am all for improved speed and bigger and better FX (Features and Xtensions) I'd really like to see R5 emerge as the first X release that users (as opposed the just programmers) can really use. Remember that the ultimate purpose of windowing systems isn't to make programming easier or more interesting or more fun. The ultimate purpose (IMHO I suppose) is to make systems more usable. X has all of these wonderful programs and capabilities and such and actually setting up your environment the way you want it and learning to use it is difficult and arcane and, IMHO, beyond the average computer user. I suspect our site is not unique in the fact that X is for the most part used by programmers while mathematicians and engineers and administrators and everybody else uses sunview or MacOS or DOS. I basically can identify from my users three areas that need to be improved. 1) A richer set of basic utility programs. The favor with which users look upon X would be vastly improved by the addition of a button driven mail interface, a rolodex/note card manager and a useful calendar program. I know that such things are available commercially but I have excellent implementations of all three under sunview for FREE...and have been unable to locate any such for X (xmh comes close for the mailer...but requires users to learn an entirely new mail interface for line terminals to intigrate it). These three tools would be an immense boon because they'd be useful to just about ALL users. Some people use xdbx, some use xfig, some use xtex (and others xtroff) but almost everyone would have a use for a rolodex with simple string searching. Almost everyone on a networked computer uses electronic mail. Almost everyone has appointments and birthdays to keep track of. 2) Layout management. This is a difficult one I know. Such management almost has to be under the control of the window manager since ultimately it has control of what goes where (and knows of the affects of things like title bars). Right now about the best you can come up with for most window managers is to record the layout with something like xplaces and then edit it by hand to adjust for window decorations. I know this is an issue full of little difficulties (what if a user later tells the window manager not to add a title bar to an application?) but it is an issue that must be resolved if X is to be made acceptable to the averange sunview or mac user. 3) Resource files have GOT to go. I've seen quite a few users get over the two hurdles above only to be utterly appalled and confused and annoyed by .Xdefaults. A nice interface client that helps manage at least the simpler features is critical. The way I'd see this working is something like this: A directory rather like /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults is set up. Each program as it is installed inserts a file here which lists the configurable features, legal values and their defaults. Start with a file for X in which defaults for things like the window manager and background color/pattern and root cursor glyph and so on are held. An interface basically similar in concept to the sunview defaults editor can then be used. On startup it would display a menu of the files in that defaults directory. When a user chooses an item the defaults editor reads in the system defaults file, then any defaults in the users personal database (which could be the standard resource file for all I care) and displays the configuration items (with some sort of useful name or description). The user can changes what he or she wants and the changed values can be written to the personal database. It'd be great to be able to open such an application, select the X item and enter a new root window color and a new window manager name, then select the item for your new window manager and tell it through a simple interface which options you want off and on, which windows you want decorated and the like...then save and restart X and have it come up the way you told it to. Again, I know it would be difficult to implement (though not all that difficult to migrate to if the personal database were in standard resource format) but it is the kind of thing that other windowing systems offer and that general users base their choice of a windowing environment upon. Thanks for taking the time to listen to a relative X novice. Regards, --Frank -- Frank W. Peters Systems Programmer Computing Center & Services fwp1@CC.MsState.Edu Peters@MsState.Bitnet (601)325-2942 "I can't give you brains, but I can give you a diploma." -- The Wizard of OZ