Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!mintaka!yale!eagle.wesleyan.edu!amolitor
From: amolitor@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: X11 bashing
Message-ID: <1991Apr16.210107.41817@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Date: 17 Apr 91 02:01:07 GMT
References: <26550@adm.brl.mil>
Organization: Wesleyan University
Lines: 51

In article <26550@adm.brl.mil>, preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com (Scott E. Preece) writes:
>                                      X is relatively
> immature technology and its authors are only beginning to switch from
> constructing new functionality to examining the details of the
> implementation and its operating characteristics.  This is hardly a
> startling life-cycle.  You *can't* realistically evaluate the
> performance characteristics of a product like X until its functionality is
> complete enough that to allow review of real applications in real use.
> 

	This is largely accurate, but philosophically flawed, IMO.
Software development cycles should not proceed as: add every concievable
feature, then tune. Something more like: get something minimally useful,
tune, then see if something more is needed. If not, STOP. If more
features are needed, add them, and re-tune.

> Most of the critics have failed to suggest what they would have liked to
> see as a windowing interface instead of X.

	Very well. I want xterms. Nothing more. I want to be able to pop
open 80x24 windows that emulate vt100s correctly. If you want to get fancy,
I might want to allow window dimensions to be specified at the time they
are opened. I agree that being able to resize windows is nice, but I this is
a fairly serious hit in terms of client complexity. At *most* I want be
applications to find out window size at startup, and not have to worry
about the thing changing size. Oh, the windowing system should provide
backing store. I don't want to deal with exposure events and such, and in
this context, there's no reason I should.

	I suppose, to be nice, such a windowing system should have hooks to
allow it to interoperate gracefully with other systems providing graphics
support and so on.

	I rather suspect that this windowing system could be written to be
terrifyingly fast, and to consume negligable resources. I further suspect
that it would provide a high percentage of the *useful* functionality of X.

	No, I won't be writing this any time soon, and no, I have no idea
what the right way to lay out the internals is. On the other hand, if
someone else writes it, and makes it 10 times as fast an 1/10 as resource
hungry as X, you *bet* I'll use it.

	Andrew

> scott
> 
> --
> scott preece
> motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
> uucp:	uunet!uiucuxc!udc!preece,	 arpa:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com
> phone:	217-384-8589			  fax:	217-384-8550