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

On Sunday 30 March 2003 13:27, Dmitry Yu. Bolkhovityanov wrote:
|  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

Well, GNOME and KDE cover together about 95% of Linux Desktops.
It can be that there is a different split in FreeBSD, not speaking about 
NetBSD and OpenBSD - as those systems have primary focus on server aspects of 
OS and XFree86 installs on those systems just complement server environment 
(network/server configuration, etc.)
It can be that 5% of all users have different (from GNOME and KDE) focus - few 
xterm sessions, and that's it.
Question: what kind of direction we should expect from XFree86 in this 
scenario?
Should XFree86 make focus on 95% of its users or focus on needs of minority?

|  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

This can explain while XFree86 development was so slow (comparing to progress 
of other open-source, desktop-oriented projects).
It's a well-known situation of "Shoemaker without shoes".
If someone wants cooperation among XFree86, GNOME and KDE - XFree86 developers 
(especially *core developers*) should use GNOME and KDE, so tha needs of 
those environments become visible.

Both TVM and FVWM have serious usability issues, not speaking about the fact 
that those WMs do not support NetWM specification.
Do you want to use ancient software, which doesn't support standard?
That's fine with me.  But you don't need modern X in this case.
Just use 3.3.6 or 4.0.x, and I guess you would be happy.

|  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.

Yes, I see your point.  FYI: I follow IceWM and BlackBox mailing lists just 
for the reason *to hear* opposite (to KDE/GNOME) point of view.
So far I can tell that requirements from users of those Wms are somewhat 
limited.
I meanL if the only thing you need to do during daily time is to configure 
remote switch/router via telnet, and couple of xterms for similar tasks - you 
indeed do not GNOME or KDE.
But I doubt that those users need modern ATI or NVIDIA card in such scenario.
XF 3.3.6 would do task for those users quite well, and probably framebuffer 
driver is quite o.k. too

|
|  	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.

I did research on memory usage by different terminal emulators and WMs, and 
cantell you that 'rxvt' and 'aterm' have lower memory consumption than xterm.
On opposite side, GNOME Terminal or Konsole are memory hungry and use a lot of 
libs, but hey - they have much more extended functionality.
If we wnat to trim bloat and *keep* terminal software in XFRee86 CVS - than I 
guess we should consider repalcing xterm by aterm or rxvt.
That's my opinion.
It would be nice to know wether aterm or rxvt authors are on this list (deos 
someone know their names) so that authors canspeak on behalf of their 
products.
I just make proposal to make XFree86 betetr in one more aspect :-)

|
|  	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.

With AA enabled, all well-done fonts look very nice.
Following advise by David Turner, I run FreeType with bytecode interpreter 
disabled for more than an year, and do not use TrueType fonts at all.
And believe me, reuslts are quite good!  You can have very nice text rendering 
at samll sizes with PS Type1 fonts and PS Hinter in Freetype.
// I am running FreeType 2.1.4 snapshot from Mar.20 and XFree86 4.2.99

|  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.

Julius started to work on BDF-to-TTF converter, and that converter is very 
close to being released (see his mail on FT and Devel mailing lists)
We shouldn't no sacrifice existing bitmap fonts, we just need to convert those 
to TTF/OpenType format with Embedded Bitmaps, that's it.
You wil get reduction of disk space required by factor of 10x, if not more!..

|
|  	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

So, what are requirements of those companies?
Can representatives of those companies elaborate, please?

|  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
|
|  _______________________________________________
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|  [email protected]
|  http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/forum

-- 
Best Regards,

Vadim Plessky
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