Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!olivea!mintaka!bloom-beacon!LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU!mouse
From: mouse@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  comp.sources.x: Examples from New Xt Book, Part 01/05
Message-ID: <9011060405.AA18914@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 6 Nov 90 04:05:07 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 42

>> [ Moderator's note --
>>   The following 5 shar's contain the source to the example programs used
>>   in Paul Asente's new book on programming Xt, the toolkit intrinsics.
>>   All flames for lack of Imakefile's should be directed to Paul :-)
>>   No, this does *not* mean that you don't have to include Imakefiles
>>   in your next submission!  --dan
>> ]

> What an unbelievable faux pas.  Would *you* buy a book on programming
> in X from someone who doesn't know how to use imake?

Certainly.  Or rather, it would not affect my decision.  A little imake
knowledge is almost essential for *installing* X, but most certainly
not for just writing programs with it.

> Or nearly as bad, someone without the courage to help in the
> standards process by helping promulgate imake as a standard part of
> any X11 installation?

(Who died and made *you* god?!)

Just because something is a standard does not make it good (or what are
we doing using anything but IBM 360s?).  imake is, in my opinion, a
useful part of the X distribution build process, and verges on useless
for anything else.  I certainly use it for nothing else.  It isn't even
particularly well thought-out; in particular, it uses cpp for something
it was never meant for, and therefore breaks on systems where it
shouldn't.  (Like machines that don't even have a separate C
preprocessor, or where the only available cpp is ANSI (ANSI cpps don't
work with imake).)

IMO it takes more courage to buck the tide than to conform.  Not using
imake does not indicate a lack of courage, or a lack of desire to help
with standardization.  And on top of all that, you have not said one
word to support the position that imake is what we should standardize
on.  As far as I can see, the only thing it has going for it is a
complete lack of competition.

					der Mouse

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			new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu