X11 bashing

[Joe English]

lm at slovax.Eng.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy) writes:
>jeenglis at alcor.usc.edu (Joe English) writes:

>> I think [separating the toolkit from the server] 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.

Well, yeah :-)  I agree with them, though.  It *can*
be very useful:  I'm working on an X application right
now that makes use of two home-rolled widgets.  They 
plug right in to the toolkit and I can use them just
like any other widget; if all the UI components were
implemented in the server this would be much more difficult
to do.

>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.

No flames; I think the Mac is a great piece of work.
But X had different design goals -- a consistent UI
was explicitly *not* a consideration.  The Mac does
some things better than X, but vice versa as well.

>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.

I disagree.  Motif apps under X are *just* as easy to
use as MS-Windows apps, and Xt programming is considerably
easier than Windows programming.  Given a decent toolkit
(and I'm not claiming that Motif is any more than decent;
"good" would probably be stretching it) you can get a 
consistent UI that functions well.  And, perhaps more
importantly, under X you're not stuck with Motif (or
OL, or Xaw, or whatever.)


--Joe English

  jeenglis at alcor.usc.edu