Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 17:08:44 -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.3.95.970515145005.2867B-100000@55-174.hy.cgocable.ca>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970515165811.9454F-100000@ultra7.unl.edu.ar>
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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