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From: bzs@WORLD.STD.COM (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Grumpy about Dopey Window Systems...
Message-ID: <9102050349.AA13956@world.std.com>
Date: 5 Feb 91 03:49:18 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 136


What are we going to do about these Unix window systems? Oh, when they
work, they're ok, they even usually manage to produce a few rectangles
on my screen and place interesting things, mostly text, within them.

But once something goes even slightly wrong, watch out!

I gave up on NeWS a long time ago because I decided life was too short
to try to read or produce postscript code, FORTH on steroids.

So I tended to focus on X11, but it's clear that it's completely out
of control.

Something wouldn't work today because some resource was set wrong, it
even complained, but it wasn't clear what it was that was setting it
this way to make it so unhappy, or how to fix it.

The error message didn't even leave me much clue what I might do to
override the bad value, let alone what a good value might look like.
Just some cryptic string followed by "bad value", and it gave up. I'm
not sure I would have been placated with merely a better error
message, I suppose it would have helped.

I glanced at my .Xdefaults file and realized it had grown quite a bit,
a quick wc -l revealed that it indeed had almost 600 lines of obscure
syntax in it. And apparently this wasn't enough to make it through
today.

I remember some number of years ago expressing my disgust with IBM's
OS/JCL because there were about 185 things you could say to a DD (sort
of like a file open()) statement. Well, here it is, 1991, and now I
have basic utilities approaching 1000 options. This is progress?

Perhaps I should take back what I ever said about OS/JCL?

In fact, an .Xdefaults file looks quite a bit like JCL on steroids, to
use that metaphor again, perhaps that's why IBM finally broke down and
endorsed Unix?

Unix's original appeal was its simplicity.

The open() call, for example, took two arguments, a file name, and a
mode (read, write, both.) Ok, later they added a third argument, but
that was mostly so you could get rid of another, somewhat redundant
function (creat()). Fair enough.

Compared to OS/JCL and other systems of its time, this was awesome
brilliance, it even worked. This brilliance was compounded by the
myriad things you could feed an open statement (files, pipes, devices)
without warning, and the resultant I/O statements (read, write) would
pretty much behave predictably, independent of what you had opened.

Being able to do this from the shell was almost a religious experience
(not almost, it was a religious experience.)

There are two schools of thought, it seems, in designing applications:

One extreme says that you sit down and think very hard about what
people will want to do with your application and try to minimize any
need for customizing. You "own the problem", and try to write a piece
of software that solves the problem at hand.

Many Unix utilities exhibit this property, although more than a few
have grown obese with flags. But, even an incredibly flag-obese
application like "ls" has maybe 30 options, of which I usually use
less than 5 except on very rare occasion. I never feel like I have to
understand the other options when I don't need them. I don't see "ls"
complaining "you forgot to set the -X flag, you lose!"

The other extreme says that everything must be customizable, that you
don't really solve a problem with an application, you invent a new
language in which every user of your program can solve their own
problems.

It's a sort of puerile Zen approach, where every question is answered
with a new question:

	Master, how shall I obtain function key nirvana?

	How did you obtain mouse-button nirvana, grasshopper?
	The syntax is similar, only different.

These are the application programs which must use extensive files to
manage their options in (oh, they may also have 50 or more flags on
the command line, but a lot of those flags only control where to go
looking for the real settings I want to use today.) You couldn't begin
to type the options on a command line.

These applications have system global files, user private files,
methods for including other files into their files so you can manage
these burgeoning files, conventions for running the files through
preprocessors, filters, macro expanders, make, and other tools to help
conditionalize their effects, private libraries with dozens of files
to help you further customize your own files, log files, large manuals
explaining the syntax of all (well, some) of these files, built-in
help facilities and hypertext navigators to help you find all the
options you might want to set today, point and click applications
who's only purpose is to set options, etc etc etc.

So, here I am wasting a few hours trying to figure out which string in
which value in which of a few dozen files has made my window manager
sick.

A window manager!

What a stupid thing to spend time on!

Who cares about 500 options to allow me to control whether the green
and mauve root menu with 3D highlights which pops up when I hit
ALT-CTL-MOUSE-3 displays "Resize" as the first item on the menu or
"Raise Window"? Or exactly what stipple pattern my scroll bars will
have (chosen from several provided or I can sit and make my own
stipple patterns with the scroll-bar-stipple-pattern-editor!!! Wow!
Now if I can only figure out the stipple-pattern syntax...)

Choose one, wire it down.

If your choices are awful, well, I won't use the software. If they are
merely good, I probably will use your software. If they are very good,
I will rave to my friends about what wonderful taste you have and how
they should all immediately write large checks and send them to you so
we can all share in this experience.

But don't try to convince me that you have provided me with a
redecorated home when all you really have done is left the address of
the local furniture store and a large book on the chemistry of paint.

I think we are being played for idiots, my friends. "The Emperor's New
Clothes" comes to mind.

Something has to change.

        -Barry Shein

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