Re:Xplain – Explaining X11 for the rest of us (2017)
by kjs3 on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @12:15AM
(#24207096)
I keep reading what you write, and also was there (I used X10 at one point, and built the Athena platform from 9-track tape). I dunno...the whole screed strikes me as bizarre.
You say things like "Xlib will block" and "error handling is particularly gnarly in Xlib", when Xlib is only one possible implementation of the X protocol. There are other possibilities like XCB. I have no idea if it has the same issues as Xlib, but the inability to separate protocol from implementation speaks to a specific bias.
Further, you obsess over the use of the term "network transparency" like a previous generation used the term "commie", even cite up-thread "documentation" where the term isn't used. But no less that Jim Gettys used it to describe X11: https://static.usenix.org/event/usenix02/tech/freenix/full_p.... You might find it inappropriate, but it doesn't seem to be confounding vernacular to most other commenters.
I dunno...I think we've gone beyond butthurt because people didn't agree with you on the direction a project should go, to some obsession that has nothing to do with the technology.
You say things like "Xlib will block" and "error handling is particularly gnarly in Xlib", when Xlib is only one possible implementation of the X protocol. There are other possibilities like XCB. I have no idea if it has the same issues as Xlib, but the inability to separate protocol from implementation speaks to a specific bias.
Further, you obsess over the use of the term "network transparency" like a previous generation used the term "commie", even cite up-thread "documentation" where the term isn't used. But no less that Jim Gettys used it to describe X11: https://static.usenix.org/event/usenix02/tech/freenix/full_p.... You might find it inappropriate, but it doesn't seem to be confounding vernacular to most other commenters.
I dunno...I think we've gone beyond butthurt because people didn't agree with you on the direction a project should go, to some obsession that has nothing to do with the technology.