ISC's X11 developer - is it worth the price?

[Martin Weitzel]

(Sorry if the following sounds a little frustrated - it's the mood I'm in.)

What are the pros and cons for buying ISC's X11 Development System?
I've bought it about half a year ago, but it's X11.R3 and hence appears
to be rather useless for the things that require X11.R4. (I've not heard
that ISC has X11.R4 available, but maybe someone else knows better.)

In trying to be slightly fair to ISC maybe I should note on the pro side
it includes servers which probably aren't in the MIT X11.R4 distribution.
But it's more than disappointing to see yourself locked out from nearly all
the fine clients appearing in comp.sources.x (at least with everything *I*
tried to compile I had to give up after some time).

Further, documentation is poor and incomplete and parts of the included
software seems just to be compiled and tossed into the package but never
really run. (Or how should I understand that "imake" has the file name
"Imake.template" compiled in where this file seems to be installed under
the name "Imake.tmpl" - to tell just one of my frustrating experiences.)

Most parts of ISC's X11 manuals consist of the O'Reilly stuff which looks
quite nice to me, but not all the clients mentioned there are available in
ISC's distribution. On the other hand there seems to be a number of "user
contributed" clients and utility programs for which I found no documentation
at all.

So I ask the others in this group who run ISC's UNIX and X11 how they
get along:

	Have you ported X11.R4 yourself?

	From where could the sources be obtained? (I'm sitting in
	Germany and I can *not* ftp.)

	Is porting X11.R4 an easy procedure? (I have ~8 years of experience
	with UNIX and C but few to none with X11.)

	Will there be problems with X11.R4 clients talking to X11.R3
	servers? (I think I *must* stay with ISC's server, since I run
	a Sigma Laserview Display, i.e. Thomas Roells X386 is not an option
	for me; btw: the Sigma Laserview is a 1664x1200 b&w-display with
	120 dpi resolution - quite nice if not most of the available fonts
	were rather useless since they are for 75 or 90 dpi displays and
	come out much too small on a 120 dpi device; am I unreasonable
	to expect from ISC that they include 120 dpi fonts if they claim
	to support the Sigma Laserview?)

	Is there additional documentation you would recommend to buy to
	ease understanding and using the X11 Development System? (E.g. I've
	yet to find something about 'imake' in my manuals from ISC.)

The final question is more a rhetorical one: Am I expecting too much if I
want a *versatile* product when I shell out $800 (which is about the price
German ISC dealers charge for the X11 Development System).
-- 
Martin Weitzel, email: martin at mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83