Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!rbj From: rbj@uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals Subject: Re: X11 bashing Message-ID: <130080@uunet.UU.NET> Date: 23 Apr 91 00:42:42 GMT References: <28063@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>> <=V6&^Q_.19037@cheers.Bungi.COM> Organization: UUNET Communications Services, Falls Church, VA Lines: 41 In <=V6&^Q_.19037@cheers.Bungi.COM> greg@cheers.Bungi.COM (Greg Onufer) writes: > >At least if Les Hill used vt100's he'd most likely produce postings with >less than 80 characters per line... it's only courtesy, after all. Yeah. I hate this too. >If X is hated so much, where are the alternatives? The sad thing is that there aren't many. Never having used MGR, I can't really rate it. It probably doesn't do very much, but people seem to think it does it reasonably well. NeWS seems like it uses the right model, but people say it's really too slow and big to build terminals out of. And perhaps the language is too awkward; postfix if's are hard to read. As one who threw many logs onto this fire, I suppose I should reveal my purpose. One of them was to simply carp about the trials and tribulations I experienced when I attempted to implement an X protocol session recorder and playback program. During this, I learned many nasty things about the protocol. You could argue that it was not designed for this purpose, and strictly speaking, it was not. However, truly robust software often finds uses for which it was not designed. But I suppose my real purpose in bashing X, just like my bashing on NFS, is to warn people who don't really know better against following along blindly with the crowd. What I am after is for people to examine the issues, to look beneath the surface and consider the issues. To those who have done that and still support X, well, someone has to work on it. Sure, both X and NFS are useful, even worth using. But let us tell the truth about their warts. -- [rbj@uunet 1] stty sane unknown mode: sane