Re: X is painful
[box on]
>I have to vent.
>
OK,
>I cannot believe that after HOW MANY years of development, X windows is
>still such a completely inconsistent and painful user interface.
>
I think you forgot to include open, free, expandable, flexible, . . . .
>The STUPIDITY of the whole thing is frustrating.
>
Ohhhhh, really! You would rather have a Mac type world then?
(Pay thru the nose, and get what you get from THE vendor)
>For example:
>
>Text fields between applications do not work the same. One is not
>guranteed to be able to copy/paste text between fields. Some fields must
>have the mouse pointer within them during the editing process, some don't.
>
The kind of car you and I drive ARE going to be different
(hopefully), cause we are allowed to do so. Just as the
programmers are allowed to express themselves through the
toolkits that they choose and/or write.
With X, a user can control the App thru X resources, granted
some of them are alittle brain-dead in this area, but this is
not the fault of X.
>There is no inter-application communication or awareness to speak of.
>
There are several. Again not the fault of X, they exist at a
different layer.
>The window manager has no awareness of what is running-- only what windows
>are on the screen. Because of this, various 'dock' programs are nothing
>more than a 'click the button to launch an app' system-- one cannot click on
>a button second time to simply activate the app in question.
>
Why should the WM be aware of what is running?
It is a Window Manager, not a process manager and never was the
developers intentions.
>The various 'toolkits' available for developping apps don't help the
>situation-- while they make it easier to develop X apps, they certainly
>don't make the apps any more impressive.
>
Back to the "Mac" situation.
If you don't like so many different toolkits, then try writing
your own toolkit that does everything that you want it to do
and then you can try marketing it and make giga-bucks.
-OR-
You could put your energy into giving to one of the toolkits to
make it become the type that you desire, which many others have
already done.
>X completely lacks a decent mail reader [outside of Messages from the
>Andrew Consortium-- it is awesome... but oncee one decides to use it, it is
>hard, hard, hard to leave. as well, there is no source available, so
>porting is out of the question [though a port already exists for x86
>linux]]. No, emacs/xemacs is not acceptable.
>
You should *really* research the history of X and the developers
intentions.
>Maybe I'm just spoiled by years of NEXTSTEP-- but, damnit, NEXTSTEP really
>is the most well-inntegrated user inrface *ever* built. Seriously.
>
OK, then I'm sad to say "Where is it?".
I too have seen a many good idea get washed away by (some say
ignorant) wave of the masses.
There are two clear choices;
1). sit with the masses and be happy with what is feed to you.
2). get in the trenches and give others a hand in what
form you can.
>Venting off...
[box off]
.....................Bill,
==============================================================
" Man's capacity to learn is not fixed in any ordinary
sense. It is not fixed in terms of the responses it will
produce; it is not fixed in terms of absolute level of
knowledge it will achieve." - Engelmann
==============================================================
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