Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!apple!voder!pyramid!prls!mips!dce
From: dce@mips.COM (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: xinit lacks init in it (FLAME!)
Message-ID: <3017@dunkshot.mips.COM>
Date: 2 Sep 88 14:56:24 GMT
References: <641@kaon.uchicago.edu> <8808311656.AA07475@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU> <4479@mtgzz.att.com>
Reply-To: dce@dunkshot.UUCP (David Elliott)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 40

In article <4479@mtgzz.att.com> avr@mtgzz.att.com (a.v.reed) writes:
>In article <8808311656.AA07475@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU>, jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jim Fulton) writes:
>> controlling one's environment.  Nobody has ever accused the public release
>> of being acceptable for end users.
>
>Good news: I am using a better way of controlling my environment. And I
>did not even have to build it myself. It came with my UNIX (TM) system.
>It is called a "SHELL"! Try it. You'll like it. You probably have
>several. The one I use is called the Korn Shell (ksh).

There's a big difference between you (most of us, for that matter) and
an end user.

Your method is fine for you.  I use a method that starts up everything
when I login to an X server that I know about, and lets me have a
separate eenvironment for every server if I want it, and it's fine for
me.  I think that any one of us could come up with a nice method for
ourselves.

The problem is that in both our cases we had to set things up by hand.
There is a very large segment of the Unix user community that doesn't
want to spend the time doing this or even learning how to do this.
These people want to walk up to the machine and have the window system
already running with a login prompt somewhere on the screen.  They want
that login to start up their chosen window manager and place windows
where they want them.  If they are application users, they want those
applications ready at the click of the mouse.

Real progress is going to be made when people can interactively (and
with a mouse) set up and change their environment without understanding
geometry specs, resource manager syntax, or even the Unix shell.

Personally, I like the fact that X is so flexible for programming, and
I don't mind hacking obscure files with strange names to get my
environment set up, but I'm a Unix systems person and write shell
scripts in my sleep, so I'm used to it.  Joe EndUser doesn't want to
know about it.

-- 
David Elliott		dce@mips.com  or  {ames,prls,pyramid,decwrl}!mips!dce