Shared libraries (was Re: Window system bashing (was Re: X11 bashing))

[Frank Mayhar]

I was out sick a few days, and apparently lost article
<155 at titccy.cc.titech.ac.jp>, but I'll followup terry's post.

In article <9471 at sail.LABS.TEK.COM>, terryl at sail.LABS.TEK.COM writes:
-> In article <155 at titccy.cc.titech.ac.jp> mohta at necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) writes:
-> +In article <1991May1.205923.7669 at ladc.bull.com> I write:
-> +>Masataka Ohta writes:
-> +>-> The best solution is not to have a complex window system.
-> +>
-> +>Jeez, you keep saying that.  But I LIKE being able to do more than one thing
-> +>at a time.  It increases my efficiency a lot.
-> +
-> +For me, to do so, job control is better than X.
-> +You might disagree, but

Well, yeah, I disagree.  Job control is not the same thing has being able to
run several processes, and have their (copious) output make sense.  With
multiple windows, this is easy.  And what about several simultaneous logins
to different systems?  I can have a window running a shell on my local system
(for local editing or something), a window with a telnet to the site mainframe,
a window with an rlogin to the mail router, a window rlogin'ed to the big
NFS server (_not_ the same as the mainframe), _and_ another window running
a continuous tcpdump.  This is very convenient, since I have things to do
on all of them, and usually have to go from one to another at a moment's
notice.  And having separate windows, all appropriately labelled, keeps every-
thing straight.  Plus I can have an xnetload and a clock running, and a
pretty girl in a swimsuit in my root window.  Do _that_ with your 42x80
terminal!

Oh, yeah, and my mainframe windows (and I can have more than one, if I want)
are usually 60x80.  (This lets me edit a file on the mainframe in one window,
and examine other, related, files in other windows.  Simultaneously.)

-> +>And since we don't have the
-> +>budget for a nicer window system, and since Sunview is a hog, X it is.
-> +if you don't have budget, X is not it.

OK, name me another windowing system that runs on a Sun 386i and that is free.
Besides (yuck) Sunview (free for the price of the 386i, anyway).  (Apparently
MGR is floating around, but I haven't seen it yet.)

-> +>Not all of us can stand being limited to 24 lines by 80 columns.  Sorry.
-> +My console is 42 lines by 80 columns.
->      And how easily can you change that (if at all)??? What, you mean you'll
-> never want to change it??? What if you wanted to view a file that someone had
-> entered on a > 80 column terminal, and you'd like to see each line on ONE
-> physical line, instead of multiple physical lines???

What he said!  :-)

->      Thanx, but I'll keep my X, bloated as it may be....

Well, if there were a viable alternative, I would use it.  But since there
doesn't seem to be one at the moment, I guess I'm stuck.

Hmm.  Maybe the best solution is not to use a _complex_ window system.  But
are there any _simple_ window systems out there?  Particularly that have lots
of free software for them?  Thought not.
-- 
Frank Mayhar  fmayhar at hermes.ladc.bull.com (..!{uunet,hacgate}!ladcgw!fmayhar)
              Bull HN Information Systems Inc.  Los Angeles Development Center
              5250 W. Century Blvd., LA, CA  90045    Phone:  (213) 216-6241