Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 15:42:39 -0300 (GMT-0300)
From: Roberto Alsina <ralsina AT ultra7 DOT unl DOT edu DOT ar>
To: pierre AT tycho DOT com
cc: OpenDOS Mailing List <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: OpenDOS graphics drivers
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970515130925.411C-100000@55-174.hy.cgocable.ca>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970515151818.9454C-100000@ultra7.unl.edu.ar>
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On Thu, 15 May 1997, Pierre Phaneuf wrote:

> On Thu, 15 May 1997, Leath Muller wrote:
> 
> > > There is a X-Windows standard (which I have never used and know
> > > nothing about), could that be used by OpenDOS?
> > 
> > Yes and it would be an excellent choice because once the X standard
> > is implemented, you could port OpenGL across as well...
> 
> 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". 

Just so you have an idea of how incredibly wrong are most of the things 
the incredibly ignorant author of that book says:

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:

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.

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.

And X *is* useful. And X has a free implementation that could be ported 
to DOS.


> Pierre Phaneuf
> 
> "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?

 ("\''/").__..-''"`-. .         Roberto Alsina
 `9_ 9  )   `-. (    ).`-._.`)  ralsina AT unl DOT edu DOT ar
 (_Y_.)' ._   ) `._`.  " -.-'   Centro de Telematica
  _..`-'_..-_/ /-'_.'           Universidad Nacional del Litoral
(l)-'' ((i).' ((!.'             Santa Fe - Argentina