Re: A strawman proposal for X.org & XFree86.org

On Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:42:12 +0400, Vadim Plessky wrote:

> Drop xterm, twm, old X toolkits, PCF/BDF fonts, etc.
> We need just basic X APIs, sufficient for GTK and Qt toolkit to be 
> operational.
> Motif support, etc. should be dropped ASAP.
> Check out XFree86 codebase - and compare to real world apps what is used.

	Please, please, please, don't make decisions what "should be
dropped" based solely on YOUR own needs, try to find out what OTHERS need.

	Not everybody are using GTK and Qt, and not everybody are using
Gnome and KDE (taking into account how resource-consuming are these GUIs
compared to any "simple" window manager, like IceWM or Fvwm, that's no
surprise).  AFAIR, Keith uses TWM, and other very well known XFree86 core
team member prefers Fvwm.  And these aren't exceptions -- many people
simply don't need Gnome and KDE's bells and whistles -- they are quite
happy without them.  

	Please understand me correctly -- I'm not flaming, but just try to
show another point of view.

	Of course, Xterm isn't so "obvious" for novice users as its KDE
and Gnome colleagues, but it is way too smarter in many aspects than those 
(last time I tried, one of those proggies didn't understand triple-click
to select whole lines), and can be a "swiss-knife" in the hands of a
well-trained user.

	As to PCF/BDF fonts...  You will probably disagree, but at small
sizes (<=14) standard, old-fashioned X raster fonts look *much* more
readable than even anti-aliased vector fonts, at least when rendered by X.
Remember -- BDF fonts are hand-tuned versions of Adobe and B&H vector
fonts, and at small sizes computer program can hardly compete with a
human in making glyph images more legible.

	And, please, remember that not the whole world of X and Linux
users consists of routine-desktop-tasks-only people -- there are lots of
industrial companies (including rather huge ones) and scientific
institutions, which have needs rather different from "the 90% of people",
and we doesn't want these, say, 10% minority to be dictated by those 90%,
do we?

	_________________________________________
	  Dmitry Yu. Bolkhovityanov
	  The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
	  Novosibirsk, Russia