Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: what's most important to you for R5?
Message-ID: <3628@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 8 Jul 90 18:12:20 GMT
References: <9529@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 37

>Xterm
>    (I don't envy anyone working on this program;  it's scary in there.)
>    Xterm currently utterly fails to support proportional fonts,

So do most other terminals.  In fact, so do a lot of programs that *run*
on terminals; for what would proportional-font support in "xterm" be
better than, say, having the application run as an X application rather
than as a "dumb terminal" application?

>and even has difficultly with some of the fixed-width oblique fonts.
>There is no provision for colored-highlights, nor for color display in
>the Tektronics mode.  This last, alone, is forcing several of my users
>to continue using SunView instead of X.

I wasn't aware that "shelltool" nor "cmdtool" - the SunView moral
equivalents of "xterm", basically - supported color, as you seem to be
implying.  (BTW, you *are* aware that there are X versions of
"shelltool" and "cmdtool", right? Check out XView - you even get
source....)

>Since Xterm *is* the primary interface to Unix (or whatever) while
>within X,

It's the primary interface for some people at some times.  Some people
run other terminal emulators ("shelltool"/"cmdtool", Andrew "tm", etc.);
some people might run inside some file manager application; at some
times, some people would be interacting with some X-based application,
not some dumb tty application running inside an "xterm".

Were I editing a document in an interactive editor/formatter capable of
displaying proportionally-spaced text, for example, I would probably
*not* be running it "inside" an "xterm"; it would probably have its own
X window(s) and not be bound by "xterm"s limitations.
 
"xterm" certainly appears to be the *default terminal emulator
interface* to X, but that doesn't mean it needs to be all things to all
people.