On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 06:08:28PM +0100, Ralf Hemmecke wrote:
> > It still makes some sense to offer version without X11
> > support, but we should make lack of X11 support clear
> > in documentaion and probably point to alternatives supporting
> > X11.
>
> I don't think that X11 will disappear too quickly, but still, we should
> be prepared. Windows has no X, MacOS has no X, with Wayland coming, X
> will not be the default in Ubuntu etc.
>
> In fact, I do not really see why FriCAS needs X. Of course supporting it
> as long as it works, is OK, but I wouldn't want to invest much time into
> it. We already have jfricas as a nice interface. Much of the stuff in
> HyperDoc lives at fricas.github.io. The big problem is our graphics
> engine. For that we would need someone that comes up with a connection
> to some newer graphics framework so that X is no prerequisit anymore.
We need some graphic environment. Simple fact of life is that
up to now X11 was most stable environment. Namely, old 30
years old programs work as they used to work. Unfortunatly,
this is not the case with newer things, my graphic code
for "famework of the day" got broken in few years. And a lot
of folks have similar experience.
Let me add that retargetting our existing programs say to
WinAPI would be rather easy (and would not require breaking
X11 support), but nobody voluntereed to do the work. It
seems that people prefer to work on new code, probably
because in new code they can concentrate on core things
and (at least at beginning ignore some system aspects and
corner cases). But for long term interface it is exactly
handling of system aspects and corner cases that determines
viablility. Adapting tried code in very slowly evolving
environment is much easier than coping with rapid breaking
chages in "modern" systems.
Another apect is performace: our X11 programs have by
current standard very small resource requirements and
high performace. Browsers (and web page code) tend to
get slower faster than hardware get faster so for
long time we can expect bad performance.
BTW: Long time ago I was one of users of shared Sun
workstations. There was X11 installed, but machines
had only 4M of memory and X11 was quite slow on them.
But I have found manuals of "suntools", clearly
marked "obsolete". I peeked into manuals and tried
the software. It had it quiks, but run with quite
satisfactory performance. Form that time I started
to appreciate advantages of "obsolete" software...
--
Waldek Hebisch
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"FriCAS - computer algebra system" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fricas-devel/20210319182054.GA8755%40math.uni.wroc.pl.
