Re: gEDA-user: X server support - was Feh!

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 12:59:45AM -0500, Marvin Dickens wrote:
> On Tuesday 01 March 2005 12:17 am, Alex Perry wrote:
> 
> > There seems to be a common attitude among casual Linux users that the
> > X server against on which an application is drawing is located on the
> > same system image as the one which is running the application process.
> 
> This is an interesting statement. FWIW, I run IBM AIX, Linux and various
> flavors dejur of MS windows in my business. As is obvious, I do not have a
> "One OS fits all" mentality - I can't afford a mentality of this nature. There 
> are specific reasons we run multiple OS's that are related to what we do. 
> With that said,  each of these systems has strong points and weaknesses and 
> we leverage the strong points on all these systems. Anyway, back to your 
> statement. It is possible to say what you said changing the name of the OS and 
> in all cases it is as true as your original statement regarding Linux:
> 
> 1.)  There seems to be a common attitude among casual IBM AIX users that the
> X server against on which an application is drawing is located on the
> same system image as the one which is running the application process.
> 
> 2.) There seems to be a common attitude among casual SUN Solaris users that 
> the X server against on which an application is drawing is located on the
> same system image as the one which is running the application process.
> 
> 3.) There seems to be a common attitude among casual HP Tru64 users that the
> X server against on which an application is drawing is located on the
> same system image as the one which is running the application process.
> 
> 4.) There seems to be a common attitude among casual Intergraph CLIX  users 
> that the X server against on which an application is drawing is located on 
> the same system image as the one which is running the application process.

[argh.  Just when I'd finally forgotten that CLIX ever existed too ;)]

> > While convenient, such an assumption ensures that the application will
> > suffer from all the same deployment nightmares as a Windows-only app.
> > In consequence, it will be severely disadvantaged in commercial use.
> 
> Again, the same 4 arguments that I used apply to your statement regarding
> convince and the danger of assuming anything. So, my question is, exactly what 
> is your point? I'm not trying to be rude or flame bate you - I just don't 
> understand your logic. It seems to me this is a common weakness that
> does not have boundaries and is OS independent.
 

I hate to jump into this, but I have also lost some time trying to figure
out why for the first time since starting to use X 18 years ago I had an
app (the gtk-2.6  demo program) which died when trying to display on certain
servers.  For reasons unknown to me it suddenly started "working" where "working"
is the demo program no longer dies immediately with missing RENDER complaints.
The font rendering is pretty ugly though.

I think Dave's point was perhaps not so much for the casual end-user, but
for programmers.  It is easy to see how someone who only uses linux can 
lose track of exactly how much extra stuff over what would be part of a
"base" unix-like installation their programs need.  The very fact that
linux seems to like to put gimp in /usr/bin and gtk in /usr/lib I think is
evidence of that.  I'm nervous about a creeping dependency list at we're
not at a trivial list here.  It is something we will need to address.

-Dan (who doesn't have a linux box)

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