From: shite@sinkhole.unf.edu (Stephen Hite) Subject: Re: Offical windows Date: 2 May 1992 05:05:06 GMT
In article <08VwJB5w161w@grafted.UUCP> ziggy@grafted.UUCP (anthony lewis) writes:
>Since there is some interest in MGR, why dont we make it the "offical"
>windowing system for Linux. I know it is not as powerful as "X", but
>being more manageable, there would be alot more people that could
>write for it....
> Ziggy.
>
Here is why I think X should get the major attention of Linux'ers:
(not listed in priority)
1. For those of us still in school, knowledge of X programming is going
to get us J-O-B-S. Also, class assignments that relate to GUI programming
on Unix are going to be X-based for the majority of schools. No more
need to stay on campus 'til the wee hours.
2. InterViews is an *easy* port to gcc 2.1. Learning object-oriented
GUI programming techniques equates to $$$. Also, you can get XView
ported and that's very valuable to employers too.
3. You can trim down the X clients/contrib apps as well as the fonts if you're
hurting for disk space.
4. With the way most 386/486's are sold these days, the minimum hard drive
size is usally around 80 meg. How many people even interested in running
gcc 2.1, Emacs 18.58, TeX and all of the other nice packages out there
don't have at least 4 meg of memory? If so, then 4 more meg won't set
set you back too much so you can run X.
5. There's many people on the net who can help you with X programming
questions. There's documentation for it galore. There are so many
freely available excellent X applications on the net that I don't
know where to start. Many of these applications can help you with
school assignments.
I have never seen MGR but I've heard that it's simpler to understand
and doesn't take as much memory. However, I don't see it as an
investment in opening up career opportunities or a source of
applications that cover the computing spectrum as well as X. Whether
any of us like it or not, X is *the* standard base for GUI programming
on Unix. IMHO, MGR on Linux is good if you want some terminal windows
up when you have little memory and little disk space, but other than that,
it's just another lesson in porting a large program.
I'll bet that both are eventually ported to Linux. Once you take a poll
after 6 months of whose running which one, I'd guess that X will win
out.
Steve Hite
shite@sinkhole.unf.edu