A Summary of Project so far

[Chris Bitmead uid(x22068)]

>>>>>> "Chris" == x22068  <Chris> writes:
>
>    Chris> What's so bad about X anyway? X is just a particular
>    Chris> protocol specification for transporting graphics over a
>    Chris> network style connection. What is so bad about this
>    Chris> particular protocol????
>
>The architecture of the API is poor. For example buttons, etc. are
>heavy weight "Window" structures. All instances of Window are heavy
>weight.

X says nothing about whether buttons should be heavy-weight. Notice
that Motif gives you the choice of gadgets or widgets being either
separate or not separate windows.

>The architecture of the wire protocol is poor. For example, it is not
>higher-order. It is a distributed protocol in which "computations"
>cannot be dynamically distributed. Compare this to NeWS or its
>troubled cousin, Java, in which the client can give the server new
>objects to compute with and vice-versa.

X is not trying to solve that problem. If it did try to solve it, it
would probably specify a virtual machine that us Lispers wouldn't like
anyway (as in Java).

Let me propose that X is good at what it does, and good for building
whatever higher level abstractions on top you might like. If you don't
use X, you'll have to roll your own anyway, so why not use it?