10 Oct
2011
10 Oct
'11
1:04 p.m.
On 10/10/2011 03:45 PM, Shoppa, Tim wrote:
Which I do.
So, to
completely avoid vendor lock-in and "a PC for every
function", I've used (and will continue to use) X11.
I don't have any problem with X11 as long as you run a
standards-compliant web browser in an X11 window :-). Or an xterm. There's very little today I do in X11 that
isn't in a web browser or
an xterm, don't you know :-)
I do a whole lot of both as well, but I also run schematic capture
software, PCB routing software, PDF viewers, and image viewers, all
pretty much daily. More and more I run Xilinx ISE. When editing
anything "serious" (meaning I'll be in the editor for more than 20
seconds) I run emacs, almost always in X11 mode.
I also run the occasional user interface for "big" software like
NetBackup, but only every so often. Also the remotely-displayed user
interface for my logic analyzer.
X11 just does not satisfy me as a way to define a
high-information-content user interface. It's certainly capable of
delivering a high-information-content user interface but it doesn't
define it.
I agree with the latter, but for the former, it does satisfy me.
(that's not to say that I think it should satisfy you) There's really
nothing that can be done on a graphics display that X cannot do in one
way or another, in an almost entirely device- and
architecture-independent way. It's goal is not to "define" user
interfaces, but to provide a mechanism for creating them.
The web by itself isn't too fancy but couple with
Javascript, AJAX,
SVG and other high-information-value media of interchange, and boy is
it fun to work in! With just a little care, apps scale up enormously
and deploy with so little effort on my part.
Yes, some of the stuff they're abusing the protocols and bandwidth to
do are pretty impressive. Using them, however, TO ME, feels like riding
a bike with square wheels. X is a pretty "heavy" protocol in terms of
bandwidth utilization, but it's positively miserly when compared to XML
or JSON!
You might note I left out many common web standards as
being high
information value.
Noted and agreed!
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
New Kensington, PA