Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mtxinu!ed
From: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Ware Ware Wizardjin
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.020525.13001@mtxinu.COM>
Date: 9 Apr 91 02:05:25 GMT
References: <9104072151.AA28702@gaia>
Reply-To: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould)
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley
Lines: 35

>X now has been elevated to the status of "Standard", and now that
>this has happened, there will be little work on such protocols
>outside of a few research labs for some time.  Truthfully I don't
>know whether this is good or bad; it seems that machines like the
>Sparc II and DEC 5K have finally gotten enough moxie to run X well
>and their prices will be in the "easily affordable" range in a
>couple years or less.

It is true that X has largely become a de facto standard.  What
that should mean, really, is that the X *protocol* has become
standard.  It also happens to mean that the current X *implementation*
has become standard.  That's where I have problems accepting X.
The current implementation is too large and too slow.  There is no
good technical reason that a small, efficient X server couldn't be
written.  The same is, to a somewhat lesser degree, true of the
client code and toolkits.

>Also, the standard means that finally there'll be the possibility
>of easy-to-use, graphical software for UNIX that has decent manuals,
>regular releases, 24-hour phone support, and enough sales volume
>to get the unit price under $1,000.  Only when this happens will
>UNIX cease to be a "niche" OS.

I have no argument with easy to use, well documented software.  I
have a problem with it only when it eats more of my system than I
believe it deserves.  I don't even have a problem with features,
so long as they have a real purpose, and aren't just somebody's
ill-considered idea of a neat hack that "will just take a few lines
of code."  3-D pushbuttons on a GUI just aren't worth the cycles.

-- 
Ed Gould			No longer formally affiliated with,
ed@mtxinu.COM			and certainly not speaking for, mt Xinu.

"I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady.  I'll fight them as an engineer."