X11 bashing

[Larry McVoy]

jeenglis at alcor.usc.edu (Joe English) writes:
> peter at ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> 
> >The problem is that [X's designers] were factoring the problem 
> >apart along the wrong
> >lines. They implemented basic drawing primitives and assumed that was good
> >enough. What they needed to be implementing was visual objects: buttons,
> >text panes, windows, etc.
> 
> I think this is one of the things X definitely does right.
> It allows for much greater flexibility in UI style and policy.
> X is still used extensively for UI research, so this flexibility
> is important.

I think that this is a trap, a typical Computer "Science" sort of pitfall.
All your college professors will tell you about separation of policy and
mechanism like it is some sort of manna from heaven.  In the area of
user interface this is, in my opinion, the worst possible thing that 
could be done.  It is worse than having a bad, but consistent, user
interface.

Think carefully before you flame me - think hard about the Mac.  The reason 
that *users* like the Mac is due, in part, to the consistent look and feel
of the user interface.  You may not like it, but you remember how it works.

X blew it by handing out all that mechanism to developers.  It would have
been much better if they took a little longer and came up w/ the same
set of functionality that the Mac (even the early Mac) had.  Then all the
apps would look the same, work the same.  The toolkits were only a weak
attempt.

What X has done is similar to providing the source for libc and telling
you to write ls.  Every implementation of ls has different options and a
different look and feel *to implement the same function*.  Most bogus.
---
Larry McVoy, Sun Microsystems     (415) 336-7627       ...!sun!lm or lm at sun.com