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From: mouse@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  Why do so many "great" people dislike X?
Message-ID: <9009102350.AA27930@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 10 Sep 90 23:50:06 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 35

> As someone who is going to be moving to an 'X' environment for
> reasons of image processing, I am *really* worried about the imaging
> functions in X.  I have heard very bad things about these functions.
> Well, actually, I just heard that they were really bad, but was not
> really told the reasons.  Can anyone expound on their experiences?

I find them reasonable.  Whether you will or not depends on what you
expect of them.

The X support is primarily for displaying images; there is nothing,
really, for image processing or anything of the sort.  (Even the
display functions are not terribly well documented, something I hope
will be remedied...I'll drop a note to xbugs.)

> Also, there is a question (keeping in mind we know very little about
> X right now) about whether software written in X will work for any X
> peripheral.  If we have 2 different display boards for example, do we
> have to have 2 different versions of the software, or do the boards
> deal with the imaging calls and (hopefully) are transparent to the
> user?

Yes and no.  There are three levels here: the client (application)
program, the X server, and the hardware.  The server usually needs to
be different for different hardware, but the clients (except in very
special and unusual circumstances) need no work when moving from one
hardware-plus-server combination to another.  (Given that the client
was written with at least minimal attention given to portability.
Assuming a 256-entry PseudoColor visual, to pick one plausible example,
is the sort of thing that might be done by an author who's not being
careful.)

					der Mouse

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