Mail Archives: opendos/1997/05/15/16:09:16
On Thu, 15 May 1997, Pierre Phaneuf wrote:
> On Thu, 15 May 1997, Roberto Alsina wrote:
>
> > > To all those thinking about X on OpenDOS, *PLEASE* go to
> > > http://ecco.bsee.swin.edu.au/unix/uh/x-windows.html and read it ALL. If at
> > > the end of this you're still in the mood to have X in OpenDOS, take 2
> > > aspirins and go to bed. You can call in sick for work.
> >
> > Have you ever *used* X?
> > That URL is just a chapter of the infamous "Unix Hater Handbook".
>
> Yes, I use X on a daily basis. I actually *love* Unix, but it is because
> we can improve on it, so I often read stuff like that to remind me it
> isn't perfect and give me ideas how we should improve it. The rest of that
> site isn't very good (except maybe the SGI memo), but this one is rather
> on the point (though quite acid in the process)...
I actually have read the book. It's the most bigoted, unfair piece of
literature I've seen since mein kampf ;-)
Ok, X has defects... a lot of them, but nothing that can't be fixed.
>
> > Quote: "The vanilla X11R4 xclock utility consumed 656K to run. And X's
> > memory usage is increasing".
> >
> > Now some facts:
> > X11R4 is *ancient*. It's X11R6.3 now, so xclock should use more than 656K.
> > The memory usage of running xclock on my system:
>
> Agreed. It is quite ancient.
>
> > Total memory used: 1028Kb
> > It's a lot, but....
> > Of those 1028Kb, 780Kb are shared with other apps (it's basically all of
> > the athena widgets, plus libX11 and libXt, it's like counting GDI.EXE and
> > USER.EXE as part of a windows program). So, xclock's memory usage is....
> > 248Kb, not 656Kb.
>
> Yes, but what do you think? That all the programs use the Athena widgets?
> Heck, either they use Motif (which I don't have, so all applications have
> libXm *static* linked), or they each use whatever widget kit they fancy
> (which amount to about the same as if they were static linked).
Well, once upon a time, Athena was all there was ;-)
Now, why discard X? Just try something like KDE (http://www.kde.org).
Most important programs, only one widget kit, pretty looking, fast and lean.
All GUI-configurable. All apps look the same (well, almost the same, right
now ;-)
>
> > xdaliclock (a very cute clock, that does digit-morphing) uses
> > 1144, of which 888 are shared, giving a usage of 256Kb.
> >
> > Other (leaner) clocks, take the memory usage under 64 Kb.
>
> Which seems more reasonable for a *clock*. ;-)
Well, You can always run this on a xterm (which would be shared):
while true
do
date
sleep 1
done
8-)
>
> > And X *is* useful. And X has a free implementation that could be ported
> > to DOS.
>
> Oh, yes, it *is* useful, I wouldn't use it if it wasn't! But it
> could/should be way better.
It's going to be (I hope :-). I just don't think discarding all of X is
needed, or even desirable.
> No real cut and paste.
Yeah, that sucks.
> My "Configure AfterStep" button starts up an editor
> (my favorite one, from the EDITOR environment variable, thank God it's not
> VI by default!) on my .steprc file. And it is just *so* ugly. I can do
> whatever pleases me to make my X environment look good: I run AfterStep
> with a heavily tweaked configuration, 3D buttons, color pixmaps and all.
> But the very second I start an application, I look at the menubar and
> think about buying a plane ticket to see the developer of the application
> and strangle him.
You sound like the perfect customer for KDE :-)
>
> > > "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
> > > regarded as a criminal offense." - Edsger W. Dijkstra.
> >
> > I thought Dijkstra said that about BASIC, not COBOL?
>
> It's in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective"... I do
> remember he made a similar comment about BASIC.
Looks like that guy didn't like too many languages 8-)
> Pierre Phaneuf
>
> "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
> regarded as a criminal offense." - Edsger W. Dijkstra.
>
("\''/").__..-''"`-. . Roberto Alsina
`9_ 9 ) `-. ( ).`-._.`) ralsina AT unl DOT edu DOT ar
(_Y_.)' ._ ) `._`. " -.-' Centro de Telematica
_..`-'_..-_/ /-'_.' Universidad Nacional del Litoral
(l)-'' ((i).' ((!.' Santa Fe - Argentina
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