Linux-Development-Sys Digest #874, Volume #6 Thu, 24 Jun 99 14:14:32 EDT
Contents:
Why not C++ ("Ralph Glebe")
Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows (mlw)
Re: WinModems and Linux (Jonathan A. Buzzard)
Samba file caching problem (XuYifeng)
Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows (Mads Dydensborg)
Re: TAO: the ultimate OS (void)
Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows (Doug DeJulio)
Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows (bryan)
Re: TAO: the ultimate OS (void)
Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows (Marcus Sundberg)
Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows ("Stefan Monnier "
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows (Craig Graham)
Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows (Paul D. Smith)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Ralph Glebe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.networking
Subject: Why not C++
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 16:09:29 -0700
I'v started to do some development on the linux platform. Looking at some of
the source code around, I noticed that it is all C as opposed to C++.
Although I've been a C programmer for many years, in the last year most of
my programming has been in C++, and I've come to appreciate some of its
benefits. Still, it makes me wonder if I'm headed for trouble trying to
program in C++ on the linux platform. Are all the programs in C because:
1) The legacy programs were written in C, and its easier to keep them that
way.
2) There is something inferior about the code produced with the GNU C++
compiler.
3) It's an extra effort to download the C++ libraries, so if you want to
distribute the source, C is the way to go if you want to be sure that your
code is going to compile.
I'd appreciate any insight, before I get to far along producing C++ code.
Thanks,
Ralph
------------------------------
From: mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 13:24:59 +0000
Michael Gu wrote:
>If Microsoft is a monopoly, X Windows acts more like a monopoly in the
>Unix world.
>
>Let's face it. X Windows is a really premitive base for modern GUI,
>terrible font support breaks GUI all the time, no sound capability, ....
>If Linux is going to desktops to compete with Microsoft, it got to come
>up with something much better then X.
>
>So, why don't we drop the X and innovate?
You are joking right?
X is at least 5 to 10 years ahead of anything Microsoft has going. They
are working like crazy to get terminal server and Citrix to be reliable.
We have what they are trying to do already.
With X, I can run a program anywhere on any machine, Windows can't touch
that.
As for fonts, yes, some tweaking needs to be done, but, that does not
demand dropping X.
As for Audio, what the hell does a GUI have to do with audio? Yes, Linux
needs a standard networked streaming audio spec, but that is not "X."
You may be confusing X with the Window manager. X is conceptually a
display driver/interface. The Window manager is more of the GUI
component. The way the applications look and the way the system feels,
is part of the WIndow manager. The act of drawing primitives and getting
mouse and keyboard data is where X is.
If you want to look at a good Window manager / Desktop system, take a
look at KDE.
---
Mohawk Software
Windows 95, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux. Applications, drivers, support.
Visit http://www.mohawksoft.com
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jonathan A. Buzzard)
Subject: Re: WinModems and Linux
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 00:10:49 +0100
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Marc Franzmeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> If it's that easy...
>
> At least I'm under the expression, that Part 1 already exists.
> Hint: ISDN-Subsystem HiSax etc.
>
> Just my $0.02
> Marc
>
There was a discussion about this on the Tecra Linux mailing list
a couple of months ago. The built in modems on Toshiba (and Compaq
for that matter) all use the Lucent chipsets. There where a few
comments for people a Lucent, that confirmed that basically all these
devices lack is a uart and AT command processor. A number of people
then commented that an AT command processor would be a big job.
Just looked in the kernel sources /drivers/isdn/isdn_tty.c for a 2.0.36
kernel and guess what is at the top of the file
* Linux ISDN subsystem, tty functions and AT-command emulator (linklevel).
My guess is that most of the donkey work has already been done. What
you need is access to the chipset documentation.
JAB.
--
Jonathan A. Buzzard Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Northumberland, United Kingdom. Tel: +44(0)1661-832195
------------------------------
From: XuYifeng <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Samba file caching problem
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 14:43:36 +0800
Hi,
I am using RedHat 6.0, I found a annoying samba problem:
in samba faq, I found a problem that Windows machine can not see
changes
on linux samba file, but I have an opposite problem: samba client can
not see
changes on files in NT box:
- use smbmount mounts NT directroy on Linux box.
- create a file on a NT box
- view the file on a Linux box
- change the file on the NT box
- look at the file again on the Linux via Samba and the changes are not
visible
did anyone encounter this problem and how to resolve the problem?
Any help will be apprecicated,
---
XuYifeng
------------------------------
From: Mads Dydensborg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows
Date: 24 Jun 1999 16:28:17 +0200
mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> You are joking right?
>
> X is at least 5 to 10 years ahead of anything Microsoft has going. They
> are working like crazy to get terminal server and Citrix to be reliable.
> We have what they are trying to do already.
>
> With X, I can run a program anywhere on any machine, Windows can't touch
> that.
>
> As for fonts, yes, some tweaking needs to be done, but, that does not
> demand dropping X.
I would like to add "printer support". IMHO the GDI printer
"paradigme" is really really handy.
But other then that, I totally agree. Even the multihead support in
Windows 98 (whatever) is old hat for X. (As it is for OS/2).
Mads
--
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Mads Bondo Dydensborg. Student at DIKU, Copenhagen - Denmark. |
| Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www: http://www.diku.dk/students/madsdyd/ |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (void)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: TAO: the ultimate OS
Date: 24 Jun 1999 13:48:52 GMT
On 24 Jun 1999 03:10:22 GMT, Terry Murphy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>Perhaps, but I very rarely see design documents or requirements
>documents for anything that comes out of the free software community.
Then you're not looking in the right places. What about soft updates?
What about vinum, the FreeBSD volume manager? What about Coda? I'm
beginning to suspect that you're just stating your prejudices, without
having done any research whatsoever.
>Not for the GNU stuff, not for the kernel stuff, and certainly not for
>the little three day hacks that they put on freshmeat.net.
Linux and linux-oriented communities are far from the be-all and end-all
of open source computing.
>Well, basically all of my ideas on software engineering came from an
>internal book by DEC about software engineering, so there's one company
>who does it. Their internal software products follow the metholodology
>I am talking about. Also, VMS and its layered products were quite
>obviously designed by committee, so there's one example of a commercial
>product.
Yes ... a dead one.
>I've never worked for IBM, but I know several people who have, and I
>understand their development metholdogy is even more formal. I don't
>think there's much doubt that their mainframe software products largely
>follow this model.
>
>As for others, from what I've read about Microsoft's development
>practices, they follow a somewhat less rigid development process, but
>still reasonably close to what I'm talking about. I also STRONGLY
>suspect that software by companies such as Cadence, Oracle, and SAP are
>designed formally, purely judging from the quality of the products.
Criminy, you're using Microsoft as a paradigm of software engineering?
That's truly perverse.
--
Ben
"The world is conspiring in your favor." -- de la Vega
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Doug DeJulio)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.x
Subject: Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows
Date: 24 Jun 1999 09:45:48 -0400
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
David Fox <d s f o x @ c o g s c i . u c s d . e d u> wrote:
>What sound has to do with X is that X applications running remotely
>should be able to make sounds - some sort of protocol is needed. Of
>course, this has nothing to do with whether X is inferior Win32, which
>it isn't.
There's a *little* bit more to it than that.
Often sound and visual operations are supposed to be the same "event"
in a user experience (eg. a button clicks when you press it). So,
it's important to be able to synch sound events and other GUI events.
If you're using two totally distinct subsystems that aren't aware of
each other, like X11 and a network sound service, this is harder
(though on fast enough hardware you often won't notice any problems).
If you use a well crafted X extension for sound, it becomes easier to
ensure that you don't hear a click and *then* see the button get
pushed in, or vice versa.
Any chance we could get the ALSA folks and the XFree86 folks talking
to each other about this? I'd start to offer more specific
suggestions, but I'm not an expert on X internals or on the
requirements of multimedia UI design (I just know enough about both to
know the problem is nontrivial).
--
Doug DeJulio | mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
HKS, Incorporated | http://www.hks.net/~ddj/
------------------------------
From: bryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 15:40:24 GMT
In comp.os.linux.development.apps Michael Gu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: If X does not support sound in its protocal, how does KDE support sound? By what
: means does a X application send sound to a X server? If you mean KDE support
: sound through the kernel, then the sound can only be heard at the machine where
: the X application is running on, rather than where the X server it is displaying
: to, which is not very useful.
: Anyway, X does look odd in the linux movement. While everything else is
: evolving, X stays the same
X does everything that 99% of the users (and programmers) need. folks
have spent man-years writing apps on top of it and it pretty much
works well as a system. there's simply too much out there that works
under X to motivate anyone to dump X and have to redo it all!
for the very reason that DOS and the win APIs are still around -
legacy code. the apps are what matters, mostly, and to have to
re-port and re-write all the useful X apps just isn't practical.
x11 isn't the best it can be - but its quite workable, and with all
the value-add toolkits on top of it, if you look closely enough, I'm
sure you can live within its constraints.
, and it is really the weak point comparing to MS
: Windows. I don't think Linux will pose a threat to MS in the desktop world
: unless it comes with an innovative, modern GUI that supports both video and
: audio.
nothing in X precludes this. and for all its warts, X11 is still FAR
more advanced than any windowing system microsof~1 can produce.
: I have Linux and Windows both available at the same time, yet I find myself more
: likely to browse the web in Windows. Netscape, (not limiting to Netscape) just
: doesn't work good in X, in terms of display
why? I find it quite acceptable.
. While most times display problem
: can be tolerable, some times it makes it unfunctional( e.g. a button is out of
: the window frame and beyond reach ).
that's a NETSCAPE bug - don't blame the platform for that! or, you
could argue that many html 'authors' (I use that term loosely) don't
know how to abide by proper html coding.
--
Bryan [at] Grateful.Net
http://www.Grateful.Net
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (void)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: TAO: the ultimate OS
Date: 24 Jun 1999 13:55:36 GMT
On 24 Jun 1999 00:57:30 GMT, Terry Murphy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>Published studies have concluded that software engineers who follow the
>design->code paradigm are more efficient and productive than those who
>follow the edit->compile->test paradigm, and that the most productive
>software engineers are those who spend the least amount of time in
>front of a computer (and, yes, I can provide bilbiographic citations to
>back this up).
Yes, and if those damned software engineers would stay away from
computers altogether, it would make my job as a systems administrator
much, much easier.
--
Ben
"The world is conspiring in your favor." -- de la Vega
------------------------------
From: Marcus Sundberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 17:28:58 +0200
Michael Gu wrote:
>
> Subject: Why we are still holding on to X Windows
Because noone have succeeded in providing a working alternative?
> Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 13:29:17 -0700
> From: Junyang Gu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Organization: Silicon Systems, Inc.
> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
>
> If Microsoft is a monopoly, X Windows acts more like a monopoly in the
> Unix world.
There exists no software named "X Windows".
> Let's face it. X Windows is a really premitive base for modern GUI,
> terrible font support breaks GUI all the time, no sound capability, ....
What the hell has sound got to do with GUIs or fonts?
//Marcus
--
===============================+====================================
Marcus Sundberg | http://www.stacken.kth.se/~mackan/
Royal Institute of Technology | Phone: +46 707 295404
Stockholm, Sweden | E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "Stefan Monnier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows
Date: 24 Jun 1999 10:57:07 -0400
>>>>> Todd Knarr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 1. Provide a generic sound server protocol independent of X11. This has the
> advantage of also allowing non-X11 apps to use sound.
> 2. Provide a sound protocol as an X11 extension instead of as part of the
> basic X11 protocol.
1 and 2 are not mutually exclusive. The sound protocol should be integrated
in X just as is OpenGL.
>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Robert Franklin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Fonts could certainly be better. GNUStep's Display PostScript is probably
> the best answer.
While I disagree that X should be scraped, I completely agree that font support
suffers from its old design from the bitmap fonts days. Anti-aliasing (along
with access to font information) is the most prominent problem and is sadly not
easy to solve within the existing protocol. It does call for X12. Of course
DPS is a strict necessity. How is Display GhostScript doing these days ?
> Ummm, X is a networked graphics protocol. It has nothing to do with sound.
> If you want to "add" sound support, you probably should look at one of the
> network audio protocols.
NO! X is not a `graphics protocol'. The proof is very simple: I see
no graphics whatsoever on my mouse or on my keyboard and yet their
support is an intrinsic part of X. X is a protocol between an application
running somewhere and `the outside world' which used to be limited to
keyboard/mouse/display but where the sound-card is gaining importance.
There are network sound protocols, and I really hope that one of them (I
couldn't care less which one (probably because I *never* use my sound card))
will take over and get integrated as an X extension (just like the GLX
(or is it XGL) extension for OpenGL).
> So, why don't we drop the X and innovate?
Waste of time. Extend X instead. The sound extension can be easily
accommodated within X11. The font extension will be trickier, but if
the transition is smooth enough, it should work just fine.
> a) exists
> b) works
> c) does things which Windows (with no expensive add-on components) can
> only dream about.
Windows is also broken by design. Mostly because of the `builtin'
window manager.
Stefan
------------------------------
From: Craig Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 16:47:24 +0000
Mads Dydensborg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I would like to add "printer support". IMHO the GDI printer
> "paradigme" is really really handy.
Even if it was ripped off from GEM (which probably ripped it
from Apple).
> Mads
Craig.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul D. Smith)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.x
Subject: Re: Why we are still holding on to X Windows
Date: 24 Jun 1999 11:57:18 -0400
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
%% Greg de Freitas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
gdf> I run Debian/potato w/KDE. not a problem.
gdf> I wish to _try_ gnome, what is gnome, where does it 'fit'? will I
gdf> still have Xserver? KDE? if so, _WHY_ would I want to squeeze
gdf> another layer in between ? When I first heard about gnome, I
gdf> _thought_ it was a _replacement_ for X. apparently, it isn't (is
gdf> it ?).
No. You're really confused.
You have a Debian GNU/Linux system: kernel, libs, utilities, etc. It
also contains X11 (XFree86; this includes your server and lots of
utilities like xterm, xdm, etc.). X provides the terminal, mouse, and
keyboard device controls for your system. On top of that you have KDE,
which is a set of desktop applications that attempt to give a common
look-and-feel to your desktop, by using the same widget libraries and
style guide: this includes the window manager, file manager, taskbar,
etc.
Gnome is a replacement, or alternative, to KDE. It's not a replacement
for X. It's not a layer between KDE and X. You would probably find all
this info, and more, at http://www.gnome.org and be much less confused.
Typically you'd stop using KDE and start using Gnome. It also attempts
to provide a suite of desktop applications. Obviously, there are
differences in the details.
Would you still "have" KDE? What does that mean? Unless you erase it,
it'll still be on your disk. You can even have different user profiles
that use different desktops; I have a vanilla fvwm2 (no desktop) setup I
use most of the time, but I have other users I've created that have
Gnome and KDE setups, for testing and playing with.
Since these two desktops consist of individual apps, you can even pick
and choose: use the Gnome panel with the KDE file manager, etc. Just
start 'em up. No problem.
Now, if you do that they'll look and feel different from each other.
But they'll work fine.
Also, right now Gnome and KDE don't have compatible drag-n-drop
protocols, so you won't be able to drag between a Gnome app and a KDE
app. There is a unification and standardization process for drag-n-drop
ongoing now which should hopefully be complete pretty soon. There are
other incompatibilities, like window manager hints, and there is an
effort ongoing now to sync those up, too (this will take longer, I
expect; it's still in the planning stage).
--
===============================================================================
Paul D. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Network Management Development
"Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
===============================================================================
These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Development-System Digest
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