X11 bashing

[Joe English]

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.

>Eventually they realised it and built a toolkit
>that let you work with those objects,

Actually, this was one of the original design decisions.
"Tools, not rules" -- you can replace the toolkit
if you want.  You can't do that on a Mac.

>[Barry Margolin wrote:]
>> I don't think our image processing and animation people...
>
>Animation? Under X? The good animation stuff I've seen has an X-window
>acting as a mask in front of proprietary high-speed graphics stuff.

If I remember right, the "..." in the >>ed line
originally read something like "would consider X to be a
usable environment for their needs."  Why did you ellipsis
the quote?  It makes it look like you're disagreeing with
Barry.

But you're right, X wasn't designed for image processing
or high-power graphics.  It's much more suitable for
more mundane things like business, CASE, and productivity
software.


--Joe English

  jeenglis at alcor.usc.edu