Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!brunix!rca
From: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: UPDATE : (Re: XWindows W11 Release 4)
Message-ID: <50917@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 24 Sep 90 19:46:22 GMT
References: <2241@opus.cs.mcgill.ca> <50554@brunix.UUCP> <2264@opus.cs.mcgill.ca>
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 58

In article <2264@opus.cs.mcgill.ca> peterd@opus.cs.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch) writes:
>In article <50554@brunix.UUCP>, rca@cslab5a.cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) writes:
>> Why must X blank the screen? I thought XNeXT was so handy in that it allowed
>> the two window systems to coexist on the same screen. Why not keep that,
>> please!!
>
>I think XNext doesn't allow you to resize the window, only
>specify the size of the root window at start-up. If you
>started it big enough to be useful, it takes the whole
>screen :-)

Well, you couldn't resize it, but you could move it around, shrink it
to a mini-window and have NeXTStep windows over the XNeXT window, it
was easier to copy information from one gui to the other. Also it was
possible to have shell-scripts that would open an X-applications in a
XNeXT window that was just big enough to show the content of an
applications X-window. This way the X-app seemd and looked like almost
a stupid NeXTStep app without cut and paste. If someone would have
managed to support cut and paste between X-selections and the NeXTStep
pasteboard, then we would be pretty close to having x-windows show up
directly in the Workspace.

>My own preference is to have two distinct user interfaces
>running separately and toggle between them, not try to mix

Depends on whether you run X in it's own right or just because a
certain app is not available in NeXTStep and thus are forced to use X.
I'm part of the latter category and thus want to hide X as much as
possible. 

>ugly for words. There has been some discussion along these
>lines about using a feature specific to release 4 that
>allows resizing the root window.

Why resize the root window? Scrollbars do a perfect job, if this is
possible.


>Of course, I also hope to hear from someone about getting
>keyboard and mouse events without NeXTstep. We've
>apparently got a lead, which means a stand-alone version
>(no NeXTstep at all) is a possibility.

Yuck! (very personal opinion)

>attention. I talked to somebody about doing a little app
>to allow us to launch this without running a shell. We
>need a button to select X, a few choices on a menu (like
>"info", hide" and "quit" and a man page.

Why don't you talk with the guy who wrote XNeXT? He has an icon, menu,
etc? 

Ronald
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man."  Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet