X11 bashing

[Dick Dunn]

preece at urbana.mcd.mot.com (Scott E. Preece) writes:
> The performance and resource costs of X are being addressed in several
> ways, by the X Consortium, by the various vendors of add-on toolkits,
> and by platform vendors selling X-based products;...

Yes, but this is repair after the fact.  Wouldn't it have been better to
have done it closer to right *once* before everyone bowed down and cast it
in concrete?  That is, instead of grinding along for several years, letting
things accumulate more and more crud (as all software does), then finally
attacking performance when it became too bad to ignore--and having dozens
of groups attacking the same problems--why not attack the problems at the
source, at the design level?

> ...X is relatively
> immature technology and its authors are only beginning to switch from
> constructing new functionality to examining the details of the
> implementation and its operating characteristics...

X IS relatively immature, but note that it is NOT relatively new.  X dates
to...what, 1984?  and version 11 to 1987?  Let's think about this a moment.
It's four years into the current version and we're just now thinking about
"operating characteristics"???  And the time until now has been spent on
"new functionality"?  Well, this is just what some of us have been com-
plaining about--feature madness.  The features have been placed ahead of
usability.

> ...You *can't* realistically evaluate the
> performance characteristics of a product like X until its functionality is
> complete enough that to allow review of real applications in real use.

If it has taken four years at the current base level to get it "complete
enough" for real applications, it suggests strongly that there's something
very wrong in the design.  There have been too many people--GOOD people--
working on it for too long, for it only now to be approaching reality.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd at ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...While you were reading this, Motif grew by another kilobyte.